Elatte may have been what I have been waiting for. Ubuntu with an opensolaris kernel. I had my doubts, as it was in alpha stages, but I have high hopes.
The Good:
Autodetects 64 or 32 bit systems.
Very fast
apt-get dist-upgrade works
runs under vmware
The Bad:
limited selection of software
/proc just ain't the same
no lsmod/rmmod/insmod
I realize the last two of the bad are pretty much no-brainers, but I figure if they made such an effort to make the system linux-like, they would make some kind of virtual redirectors or something. I was amazed at how fast the install and execution were.
further experimentation is necessary.