http://code.google.com/p/dapper-dot-net/ <br/ > https://github.com/robconery/massive <br/ > http://www.toptensoftware.com/petapoco/ <br/ >
Both are "heavy-duty" orms, while those 3 are more lightweight. My personal view is that for writes and maintaining a domain model, NH (or EF, but I prefer NH) is a good option, and when you need performance or just want a light layer to ease the mappings from sql to objects, micro-orms are the best option.
I do miss using Linq to query the db, but not enough to make me go back. I use EF in my main job, and while it does the job, sometimes I find myself being constrained by the framework. That's not an issue with EF so much as it is an issue with any kind of ORM.
I do see where there could be some ways to improve querying the database where you're doing a lot of joins or returning data that is not limited to the table design at all.