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OpenBSD fares no worse than Windows under Xen - both work just fine under HVM.

Can you install whatever OS you want on EC2 windows instances?

Yes, but you still end up paying the additional costs for the Windows licenses (even if you're not using them).

Colin Percival (cperciva here on HN) maintains up-to-date FreeBSD AMIs for EC2, based on the Windows instances:

http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/

Now I am confused. I started looking into this, and Amazon claims they are not using HVM for windows instances, they are using a PVM driver. So in that case, running "windows" instances wouldn't help. But then, why are those freebsd amis intended for "windows" instances?

Edit: nevermind, the PVM drivers they were talking about are just to speed up IO, windows instances do have to be HVM.

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