This thread is old, but I've just realized a benefit to already having a lot of unix experience under my belt.
I'm taking some online courses and the first week of each course is essentially bringing the Windows and Mac users up to speed. This is a working directory, this is the command line, these are some basic commands, etc. The working environment of the teachers and TAs is linux and the classes are adapted somewhat to Windows and Mac. Were it possible to test out of these sections, I very easily could. More generally, though, Windows and Mac are designed to be easy to use with little introduction. They strive to be simple and intuititve, and are heavily mediated. On the rare occasions when I need to use one of these systems, I can find my way around without any trouble. Just recently, my wife had a problem booting her Windows machine and, with a little google-fu, I was able to edit the registry and fix the problem. Linux (overall) isn't really designed, nevermind designed to be simple or intuitive. Given the longer learning curve, you kinda have to do a cost/risk analysis of learning something you may not need versus not knowing something you do need. I have the heart of a boy scout (figuratively, that is) and I lean towards "better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it." Given the degree to which Linux has penetrated the computer zeitgeist, specifically in open source communities, there's a strong argument to be made to at least familiarize yourself with the basics of Linux. And I mean the command line specifically, since the various GUIs are all trying to emulate and copy Windows/Mac. The best reason, of course, is that it could save your life someday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng /dev On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Siobhain Rivera <siori...@indiana.edu> wrote: > Hi Everyone, > > Thanks for the friendly and helpful comments. I really appreciate the > information, and I will check out the linked articles. If you come up with > anything else, I'd love to hear about it. > > Siobhain Rivera > Indiana University Bloomington > Library Science, Digital Libraries Specialization > ASIS&T-SC, Webmaster > -- Sent from my GMail account.
