this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Openbsd is definitely more secure than secureblue. There is only so much you can do to handle the massive monolithic architecture of the Linux kernel. Further down the stack, many parts of Linux, like sudo, dbus, or systemd are regularly hit by zero days. The SELinux domain architecture that Secureblue is interesting, but SELinux is extremely complex and difficult to get right, compared to the much more simpler pledge and unveil sandboxing that openbsd offers.
In addition to that, there are further issues like the problematic way that user namespaces interact with browsers. (And user namespaces are frustrating in general, secureblue actually has a short article on their problems). For maximum security, you want to sandbox tabs from eachother using user namespaces (only works on chromium btw, firefox can't do this so it doesn't matter) — BUT, if you run your browser in a sanbox created by user namespaces, then you can't nest them, disallowing you from using that powerful tool to isolate tabs. So you are forced to make a choice: You can either sandbox the browser itself, in exchange for weakening the isolation between tabs, or you can strengthen the isolation between tabs, in exchange for weaking the sandbox around the browser itself. Giving the browser access to user namespaces is questionable though, because see above, user namespaces have led to a lot of vulnerabilities.
OpenBSD's pledge + unveil (but only on chromium again), does not really make such tradeoffs. It can sandbox tabs from eachother, while also sandboxing the browser itself. In addition to that, pledge + unveil do not present a massive kernel attack surface that people have had to restrict for having too many 0days. And this is just one of the many, many examples, where OpenBSD presents a better security posture than Linux.
Qubes is technically Xen, a different kernel than Linux. The Xen kernel virtualizes Linux distros, from which you can manage Xen, or do normal Linux app stuff. But nothing stops you from using a BSD virtualized by Xen for management or usage. Qubes talks about why they use Xen here — but the short version is that they did not consider the Linux kernel's kvm secure enough for their usecase.