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OpenSolaris takes quite a bit of time getting used to IMHO coming from FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and many many versions of Linux. I used it because I wanted ZFS, virtulization, and also to try something new.

I did move back to FreeBSD after about a week or so since I thought OpenSolaris brought unnecessary learning curves for someone new. Things like 'ps' being different than every other distro, network interface setup and modification is annoying, the number of programs that you can compile outside of their package manager are slim, and overall not very friendly (I don't want to use the GUI, ever). However, I have 4gb of ram and ZFS really should only be run under 64-bit FreeBSD. Qemu doesn't seem to run, Xen isn't even an option for virtulization and WINE doesn't work under 64-bit (these are the main reasons I bought 4gb of ram in the first place).

ZFS has been running flawlessly on FreeBSD for me thus far, and even the maintainer says he's been using it since he ported it over without a hickup. FreeBSD runs version 6 of ZFS, while OpenSolaris currently runs version 11. It IS true, once you go ZFS you don't go back.

I refuse to run Linux, for personal and limiting reasons, and FreeBSD won't let me virtualize. It seems that in the next few days I'll be biting the bullet and moving back to OpenSolaris. It is very nice that ZFS is seamlessly integrated and snapshots are automatically created when updating the system. This ensures you can easily roll back or boot back into an older install to test different things.
All in all OpenSolaris HAS some potential, but their licensing is very wack and limiting. If Sun wants their OS to evolve and take on more users in the community, the licence will really need to be changed.

Edited 2008-08-19 18:55 UTC