I've been using OpenBSD for years now and still find new and helpful stuff in core on occasion. For instance, this week I wanted to convert some old CDs to FLAC, and found cdio can do the CDDA extraction (and faster than cdparanoia, even.)
I use cwm on my OpenBSD workstations. It is fast, stays out of my way, and does not depend on a whole cockamamie "desktop environment." It's not for everyone (especially those who feel the need to "theme" things) but I like that it's available in core.
Oh, sorry, I was thinking of FreeBSD. And honestly it's been so long since I've used it I shouldn't have even chimed in. I remember using it on FreeBSD 9 when I was first getting into zfs.