Installing OpenBSD on the Pomera DM250{,XY?} (opens in new tab)

I’m really glad to see this; I miss having openbsd on my long ago Sony Vaio, and I’d rather have a familiar editing environment on the Pomera’s hardware. I’ll have to study how keyboard layouts work to see if I can correct that; my DM250 has the U.S. layout stickers and I’d rather swap layouts than peel them.

I tend to use FreeBSD and Linux mostly. Here is my take on OpenBSD.

Good:

- Small, comprehensible system

- Emphasis on simplicity

- Developers good about getting OpenBSD working on newer architectures e.g. Apple M1/M2

- pf

Bad:

- Very security forward but userspace and kernel almost exclusively in C

- Many security mitigations have questionable value but most certainly make the system a bit less flexible e.g. raw syscalls only via libc

- No journaled filesystem in 2026

- Still uses CVS in 2026

- System feels a bit slow and not yet fully tuned for multicore (improving gradually though)

- Community a bit insular and does not feel very welcoming (you may disagree)

TL;DR - I'm not a fan. Linux for maximum features and performance. FreeBSD when you want to use a BSD. Why FreeBSD ? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47322710