I know the answer is "just use FreeBSD", but out of interest does anyone run OpenBSD with a LAMP stack in any sort of production environment with a medium-level(whatever this may mean to you) of traffic ?
The answer is actually "just use OpenBSD". I work for a local ISP and reinstalled all the aging OpenSUSE boxes with OpenBSD almost 5 years ago. Zero issues and peace of mind, because you know your servers can take care of themselves while you're on vacation. (I've started with OpenBSD around version 5.0 and have witnessed a situation where linux had a bug where whole world was running around with hands in the air and the same issue has been either fixed or mitigated in OpenBSD years ago)
Core of the network is still Cisco and Nokia boxes, but all the support/servery stuff runs on OpenBSD - ELK stack, nextcloud servers, db servers, smokeping, nagios, syslog, tacacs, rpki validators, mail relay.s - you name it.
Only exception is backups servers, where we use TrueNAS with ZFS (FreeBSD-based).
I was testing 10gig SFP+ NICs (intel, broadcom) in linux, freebsd and openbsd with iperf3. I was seeing line rate in linux and freebsd and somewhere around 3gbps in OpenBSD. So while linux and freebsd has top performance, OpenBSD's performance with security mitigations enabled by default is good enough(tm) in most cases.
This will be very opinionated, but ... when I'm working with linux, I need to google stuff around, because there are no [,usable] manpages. Sure, it's easy, everybody just loves to google their stack traces to find solutions ... BSD is boring, it just work. And from my experience, OpenBSD was acting like an apprentice, when I was setting something up. It handed me the tools or configs at the moment I needed them. Everything is there at arms reach. If you know what you're doing, the system is helping you. Need config file? - there's one in /etc/examples!
The old saying goes like "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." I don't think I need to tell you, but do your testing before you switch over your production. Hopping off the bandwagon has its benefits, but also its costs. OTOH, (ad 2), I think you'd know your way around. I've played with BSD4.3 in SIMH couple weeks ago and was surprised that I can use it!
ad 3: I've had an argument with security guys forcing minimum password length couple months ago. Somehow they just couldn't understand that I don't have passwords at all and use SSH keys. Also, linux doesn't have pledge and unveil or chroot by default, so they just don't understand the benefits ...
ad 5: for me, OpenBSD is the only system where I can ps auxwww and know what's going on ... Not sure what's going on, but the working theory is that most people just don't care or understand, so this is not a value for them from the start...
Most linux VPS could be taken over by writing miniroot.fs to the virtual drive & rebooting the drive. Some might need to emulate some cloud-init stuff ...
P.S. I've started with linux more than 20y ago. I was blessed enough (hey! life provides only gifts ;) ) to administer some Solaris 6,7,9 and 10 boxes that has shown me "proper" UNIX ... since then, it's painful to experience some linux stuff that has been solved already, and just works(tm), but NIH ...
> ad 3: I've had an argument with security guys forcing minimum password length couple months ago. Somehow they just couldn't understand that I don't have passwords at all and use SSH keys
I have had the exact same argument many times too, I could not get them to understand how much better ssh keys are then passwords.
Now if I can only find a "DECENT" VPS host that offers any bsd default install options looking at you scaleway !
I don't know if Vultr fits in "decent" but I've had no problem with them and they support direct OpenBSD installs. You can spin a full OpenBSD in less than 2 minutes.
> I was seeing line rate in linux and freebsd and somewhere around 3gbps in OpenBSD.
This is the only reason I don't still run OpenBSD firewalls - because the little appliance I use doesn't have the CPU to keep a gigabit NIC saturated and I have gigabit internet. Now that topton refreshed their offerings with 10th and 11th gen 2.5gbe firewalls [1] I plan to try again. Having said that, I tried drag racing PFsense, Fedora and OpenBSD in virtual machines on a DL360 G9 under vmware and OpenBSD wasn't able to keep up there either.
I run a few Rails apps with about 200 weekly users total all on OpenBSD. I much prefer it over my Debian experience. But I have to say Fly.io and Render look very good.
I know the answer is "just use FreeBSD", but out of interest does anyone run OpenBSD with a LAMP stack in any sort of production environment with a medium-level(whatever this may mean to you) of traffic ?