Solaris is a real killer Os, all linux sysadmins that loves their os should give a look to solaris/opensolaris. The bad point, you have to compile everything, Solaris is bundled with some opensource tools, apache2 mysql , but if you want more and want to stay up to date, you have to do it yourself (yes in the old time a sysadmin compile his program), but it stills true for solaris.

Blastwave is an already working package manager, but doesn't do the trick IMHO.

Nexenta answer to this question: the best Unix kernel with a really good package manager apt and a bunch of pkg already built for you. It's at beta stage, but seems ready to play with on i386 arch, I really hope they want port it to Sparc/T1.

Their goals:

  • Integrate the best existing software: SunOS kernel and GNU userland.
  • Provide easy-to-use, easy-to-install, easy-to-upgrade GNU/Solaris distribution.
  • ... and prove that the sum, as it often happens, is much bigger than its parts.