Re: OpenBSD is Faaast!
I run a large set of benchmarks for my software in VMs on my PC, testing a wide variety of Linux and BSD OS distros. FreeBSD and OpenBSD were always measurably slower than any of the Linux distros, and roughly comparable to Windows. I suspected that this was mainly a reflection of the respective compilers.
A big gap opened up however after Meltdown/Spectre mitigations were put into place, with OpenBSD and FreeBSD slowing down very significantly, OpenBSD much more so than FreeBSD. I suspect this was a result of different ideas of what a suitable compromise was in terms of security versus performance.
Whether any of this makes a difference will depend on your application. If your application is I/O bound, then the CPU performance difference probably won't matter. So, OpenBSD might be a good choice for a mailserver or firewall or the like, but not a good choice for a supercomputer. Benchmark your application and keep the security / performance trade offs in mind.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
