Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month

Look, the cloud is a monoculture of Linux and systemd, and that's fine if you like your servers to be as predictable as a corporate PowerPoint. But for those of us who crave a bit of *paranoia* in our hosting, OpenBSD is the answer. This article nails the practical reality: DigitalOcean doesn't officially support OpenBSD, so you're going to have to do a little elbow grease. But the payoff is a system that's secure by default, with pf (packet filter) that makes iptables look like a toddler's crayon drawing. The $4 droplet is the perfect sandbox — it's cheap enough to experiment, powerful enough to run a real service, and OpenBSD's minimalist philosophy means you're not wasting RAM on a GUI or a million background daemons. The guide correctly emphasizes the weird bits: the cloud-init quirks, the need to resize the disk, the manual network config. It's not a one-click install, and that's the point. You're learning the system, not just renting a black box. There's a deeper angle here too: the tension between convenience and control. DigitalOcean, AWS, all these providers want you to use their curated images because it makes *their* life easier. But OpenBSD users are the stubborn ones who say, "No, I'll read the man pages, thanks." This article is a small rebellion against the cloud's homogenization. It's not just about saving $4 — it's about owning your stack, understanding your firewall, and knowing exactly what's running on your box. That's the real value, and the author gets it. Source: <a href="https://nil.wallyjones.com/run-openbsd-on-digitalocean-for-4month/">https://nil.wallyjones.com/run-openbsd-on-digitalocean-for-4month/</a>