I installed OpenBSD on an old Dell B130 last week, but it choked on the Broadcom BCM4318 wireless controller. I got it to connect with little difficulty after installing the driver, but speeds were slower than molasses (it took minutes to establish SSH connections between machines on the same LAN). Attempts to use the wired Broadcom BCM4401-B0 ethernet controller prevented it from booting. I finally gave up and installed Slackware Linux on it again, which also requires extra work for the wireless controller but yields great performance.

I don't blame OpenBSD and am still looking for an appropriate machine to install it on. I'm no stranger to the OS, having used it to build transparent bridging firewalls in the 3.x days. The installer has really improved a lot since then.

But I am concerned with the state of networking hardware, now that more and more machines are produced with WiFi only. The number of points for failure seem to be multiplying and the dependence on an Internet connection is a given these days (sometimes even during OS installation). I look forward to the day when all OS installations handle network connections as simply as OS X does (which I realize is by virtue of its control over hardware & software integration).