Here are some of the things that confused or frustrated me (and in some cases still do) as an experienced windows "hacker" becoming a linux "newbie":
There are 4 fuzzily defined categories the group caters for: (Carl's on-the-spot approximate Linux-user taxonomy) 1. Linux newbie and Windows newbie 2. Linux newbie and Windows expert 3. Linux expert and Windows newbie 4. Linux expert and Windows expert
Each category has different learning requirements. Because I'm closer to 3 than any other category, I'm not the best qualified for explaining the Linux answers to a Windows expert. But I'll pick on one anyway:
6. The whole command line versus gui thing. I could (arguably) do (almost) anything in windows via a gui and now I've got the option in some cases. In other cases only the command line.
The command line really excels when automating tasks. It's very difficult to reliably automate a GUI task. An admin-style tasks are the very tasks which benefit a great deal from automation (particularly if a large number of computers are involved).
I think I read somewhere that Windows was getting some kind of admin scripting ability - didn't really pay much attention though.
Cheers, Carl.
