Get Nexenta now if you want OpenSolaris kernel and Ubuntu userland. ZFS/DTrace anyone?
I have blogged about this before, go get it here ,it is out of beta now. OpenSolaris kernel, GNU userland (most of Ubuntu’s packages).
I have mentioned before that Ian Murdock, the chap who started Debian, has joined Sun to work on Project Indiana. This is basically a binary distro using the OpenSolaris codebase and including a load of free software that folk have come to expect from a linux distro. This may work, but it’s not great now and the binary distros of Solaris, called Developer Preview and Community are dire.
In the great tradition of Debian + YOUR_FAVOURITE_KERNEL (a la Gnu/Hurd Gnu/FreeBSD and GNU/NetBSD) comes Nexenta. I use it and like it, ZFS + Samba were my goals I have that now, but I am looking forward to the new in-kernel CIFS server, expect benchmarks after I move house.