I have found in the
archives that in general you can recommend OpenBSD to anyone without
any background to start tinkering with. So, there might be no benefit
of a learning curve of FreeBSD --> OpenBSD, as I, may have wrongly
guessed?
OpenBSD is about as easy to pick up as any other *nix, so long as you
understand the fundamentals (ie; how to navigate a system using a
command line, etc). The only thing that tends to throw people off is
that OpenBSD uses a somewhat non-standard way of dividing disks up into
partitions.
A lot of people use both systems regularly (myself included) and can
offer their thoughts about their personal gripes for each, but you'll
have to post using a non-disposable email address for people to reply to
directly since no one wants to start an on-list flamewar over this stuff.
You might also want to subscribe/post this question to
"freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org" (their equivalent list to
"misc@openbsd.org")
What I'd like is a secure wireless router and a file server
In general, one of OpenBSD's main strengths is security whereas one of
FreeBSD's main strengths is storage. For example, FreeBSD needs a lot
more futzing to really lock down properly, and OpenBSD lacks things like
ZFS (and the extreme reliability options it provides).
Can it handle both roles, router and
file server
Well it depends a lot on what you're considering "modest loads". If this
is a home system serving half a dozen devices, only pushing a megabit or
two of net data, and only hosting a single drive for file sharing with
no fancy options, then basically any hardware that still boots will
handle both roles. (Like literally, a Pentium II or III will work fine).
is it a good idea to have one device for these 2
roles in the first place?
Maybe. It depends a lot on your risk/cost assessment.
Personally I always advocate for a router/firewall to be a dedicated
device and put all your other services hosted on other hardware inside
your LAN. That way you can lock down the router for security but still
let your other systems run whatever they need to without messing around.
However, if you have money/size/power constraints then mixed solutions
are sometimes the lesser of many evils.
OpenBSD and FreeBSD are both perfectly capable of serving both the
router and file server roles if you don't need the advanced features of
the other. Although if you do, and you really only want an all-in-one
device, then you should probably sit down and try to decide if security
or storage options are more important to you and start from there.
As a side note though, either way I would strongly advocate splitting
out the wifi into an external WAP connected to the router via ethernet.
Internal wifi cards always seem to be a pain on any *nix system- there
are about a billion chipsets and drivers seem to like breaking for
random reasons. Also, separate devices means you don't have to
compromise for physical location- the WAP can go wherever it gets the
best signal strength and the router can go where ever it's easiest to
administrate and/or interface with your ISP.
