Didn't Ubuntu switch to something like Solaris' SMF? I actually like SMF quite a bit and I imagine RHEL/Fedora will move in this direction eventually....
Speaking of Solaris - are any of projects like Nexenta usable yet (distributions with the OpenSolaris kernel and the same user userland as Ubuntu or other current distro)? If I have to learn a new set of admin commands, maybe I should at least get zfs in return.
I don't know the state of Nexenta but I can live with Indiana. As a desktop, it was nice to get Nvidia drivers bundled, a working thunderbird + lightning plugin enabled, working sound (can I repeat that?), pidgin, openoffice (needless to say), sunstudioexpress, gcc, printer support, nice crisp looking fonts, compiz if that is your things and later xchat, ekiga...but no mplayer/vlc (not initially anyway...have to check with latest), no KDE (although there are packages outside the repo available), had to download a mp3 plugin for gstream, and learn a whole load of Solaris stuff unless you use dhcp.
zfs snapshots are nice, a boot environment system coupled with zfs that allows roll backs between upgrades, installations of software, alternate boot environments for testing and a whole lot more all available with just a few commands or even just one command...
You get more than just zfs in return...integrated iscsi/nfs/smb sharing, nfs4 acls, and also a real cold elitist crowd.
Either way, it is worth looking at nexenta too. I had this thing for Sun cc compiled asterisk so I dropped nexenta and moved to Solaris Express and later Indiana.
No flar or instantly install on thousands of servers support for Indiana though. For some things, RHEL just stands on top. Maybe I should give Fedora a try once again.