> the philosophy as being "as unix like as possible" prevented it evolving and adding nice things like package managers
Others have pointed out that the existence of Slackware package management gives the lie to that assertion. It remains to point out that Unices had package managers, so being "Unix like" does not involve eschewing package management at all. XENIX had a package management system, for example. It originated in AT&T System V Release 4, was also present in Solaris, and has been picked up by the Heirloom Project.