I remember when I first switched from Slackware (everything complied from source) to Redhat... all of their changes infuriated me; especially changes to the boot process which resulted in a machine that wouldn't boot when I rebuilt the kernel the 'Slackware way'.  I eventually got used to Redhat's way and have a love hate relationship with RPM/yum.  I used Debian for a long time too and liked apt-get over yum for a long time.  Ubuntu's changes are about as annoying to me as Redhat's were.  Apt-get/yum are about equivalent and both can get you into dependency hell but they work for the most part. 

I haven't liked the changes in Fedora with Gnome lately either... switched my desktop to cinnamon instead.  I want my start menu and virtual desktops... I don't want a desktop that wants to be a tablet. 

JD