[dspillett]

Another key difference is the startup/shutdown process (and service management generally). Some use sysv stile init setup, some use the style more common with BSD.

Several distributions (such as Ubuntu and its derivatives) are moving towards replacing init and related scripts and tools completely with upstart or similar options (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Init#Replacements_for_init).

[burgerbrain]

Notably Fedora has switched to systemd, which probably means we'll see it or maybe something like it in RHEL sometime in the future.

[effigies]

That was actually one of the particular things I was thinking of when I said "multiple solutions to the same problem", so I didn't add it as a separate thing. Though it is a pretty major difference that can trip someone up moving between two distros.