I dont think that everyone who hates linux uses a specific linux distro so that they can say they are using linux.
The reason I dislike RH is beacuse of the how much a pain in the 4ss it was for me to configure and install anything from source. and lets not even get in to DAYS I spend trying to install an rpm for something that I want to use! RPM's IMHO are as bad a dll-hell. The Cylical dependencies I ran in to were just so much fun to try to resolve!
Personaly for linux I use slak, gentoo, and freeBSD (I know its not linux). For windows I use 2k.
If you really want to to the "jump in the middle of a lake to see if you can swim" method you can try slakware.
