| I've used (in no certain order) Redhat, Slackware, Debian, Libranet, Progeny (I was a beta tester, couldnt stand it), Mandrake, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and am trying out Arch linux atm. My main distro has been Debian for as long as I can remember, sometimes I'll try out new distros or new versions as they're released.
The one thing I can tell you about every distro of Linux / BSD is to use one and stick with it for awhile. Don't automatically think that because you're getting frustrated with one or because the new release of SomeLinux 8.0 has some new apps on it that you have to switch every month or so.
So you're using Redhat. Learn to use it. There isn't much you can't do with that distro that you can do with another. You can install a very stripped down base system and then install all the rest of the system by hand with source if you wanted to, same as any other. If you want to install every package with RPM, by all means do it. No matter which distro you choose, check the security updates regularly (I'd suggest subscribing to a security mailing list, thats what I've always done) and update the system as needed.
Debian happens to be my main distro of choice for several reasons, but the nicest one is simply that dpkg and apt help control the software / daemons / libs on the system without my having to think about it. I can apt-get any peice of software I want, and the dependencies will automatically be grabbed off the server and installed at the same time. No more hunting down and compiling library after library to support one application. Some other distros support similar structures, but I've not found them to be comparable to apt. | 
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