Hello,

Paul hit the nail on the head here:

If you are interested in sys admin, web server admin and programming for platform independence and want the best possible way to market yourself, learn two or more platforms. Linux and Windows are the two most popular right now.

I have found that the experience, along with reading anything/everything you can, will help you in just about any envrionment you might find yourself in. Make sure and use the OSes out for yourself. There is too much bias from most people on which is better, or the supposed advantages/disadvantages of each to go based on reading and asking opinions (the topic loaded with flame...MS vs. Linux).

Myself, I have 3 flavors of Windows running, 2 flavors of linux and Sun Solaris that I split development, web serving and testing between. This not only has prepared me should I need to go find a career or job, but has allowed me to learn the true differences between the OSes. You can buy a cheap PC to throw Linux on and play around with it to learn (or even dual boot linux/windows on one system). For the Sun Solaris, I picked up a Sun workstation on eBay for about $275.

I do have to somewhat disagree with Paul as far as OS choice becoming irrelevant. To truly learn/know the OS use it in the native envrionment it was meant for. For developing applications for the envrionments, you need them in the native form, not emulated. The other face to this is who you work for. Working for yourself, I agree with Paul, it is increasing irrelevant as it is more personal choice. However, if you are going out into the IT industry, what does the majority of your target employers use? That is what you will want to know.

Best advice? Try them out. Linux is great to use and learn, and is a good change of pace from Windows. Be prepared to do much more command line interfacing with the OS. I use Red Hat and Mandrake and like both of them. For Unix, I have used Sun Solaris, and a little bit of HP-UX and Irix. The nice thing is though, once you know Unix/Linux many of the basic OS operations are similar enough it is like changing between Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the eye candy is different, but the base fundamentals are similar.

For Macs....let just say that is my last conquest to learn and get invovled in so I cannot say much for help on it as my experience is zilch.

My one biased comment -- I booted my sun system up and ran stable without a reboot of any sort for about 4 1/2 to 5 months. Windows?? About 4 1/2 to 5 hours....

Hope this helped at least a little, and if you get started on one of the *nix flavors and get stuck, there are lots of great minds on here that can help you out!