I’ve done it: I’ve completely migrated everything to OpenBSD.
My VPS’s and my daily laptop (t14s) now run barebones OpenBSD installs and I’m doing my best to stick to tools in the base install.
With OpenBSD sticking closely to base is actually doable:
vi
works fine and can be configured to do 90% of what I used nvim
for;
cwm
works like dwm
(but I’ll never give up suckless tools);
ksh
is wonderfully stable and concise;
disk-encryption can be done through the installer;
pkg_add
has a robust ports tree with all the software I need;
and all the usual xorg
tools come pre-installed with xenocara
.
Switching xterm
with st
and adding ungoogled-chromium
(which offers unveil
and pledge
support), dmenu
, R
, LaTeX
, &c. gave me everything I needed for a functional system.
Overall, installation is a breeze and gives you a boring system that only does what you need.
If you’re familiar with suckless tools and you’re on the fence about switching to OpenBSD, just take the plunge! Transition pains are minimal.