The Nexenta Operating System "is a free and open source operating system combining the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU application userland. NexentaCore is a minimal (core) foundation that can be used to quickly build servers, desktops, and custom distributions tailored for specialized applications. It is already used as the foundation for NexentaStor storage appliance."

It tries to bring the Ubuntu and Debian experience to OpenSolaris. In fact, the Nexenta Operating Sytem even wants to become the official port of Debian/GNU to the OpenSolaris Core.

This 1.0 release will be used as foundation for further Nexenta OS development.