For some reason I had a much easier time getting OpenBSD working on one specific laptop (a Thinkpad E585 where I had replaced the stock Wifi with an Intel card). A lot of Linux distributions got into weird states where they forgot where the SSD was, and there was chicken-and-egg about Wifi firmware.

OpenBSD at least booted far enough that I could shim the Wifi firmware in as needed. I probably picked the wrong Linux distribution to work with, since I've had okay luck with Debian and then Devuan on that machine's replacement (a L13)

probably because OpenBSD developers use laptops, so they port the OS to laptops all the time.

FreeBSD has a few laptop developers, but most are doing server work. There is a project currently underway to help get more laptops back into support again: https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop