Disclaimer: Not an expert on the topic by any means, just my take as a someone running this release on a few boxes. Have less experience with the latter portion

Disclaimer: Not an expert on the topic by any means, just my take as a someone running this release on a few boxes. Have less experience with the latter portion of your question, more with OpenBSD. I think it's comparable in terms of features, and many of those features even originated or have canonical implementations that started under the umbrella of OpenBSD. Also some of the most sane defaults, and simple install process, of any OS I've ever used. I think where OpenBSD really shines though is the documentation. Most issues I run into can be solved by reading the man pages included with the default install. Also the video linked by q3k elsewhere in this thread is a great watch.