Unix experience helps with Linux since a lot of stuff is the same, or at least similar. Although I have had to work with, develop for, and manage Windows (and previously DOS) systems, I always preferred Unix variants. Most of my career, I developed software for both MS and *nix systems, but for the really critical stuff, it was Unix (large-scale distributed systems) or QNX (real-time systems). MS cruft was mostly as user-facing front-ends for the others. If the user interface crashes, it won't take the factory down, or cause the nuke to go critical...