Will a Mac help me learn Linux?

I worked with a Mac last week for the first time ever. I noticed that the shell is very similar to Linux. I normally develop on a Windows machine and tend to be a noob at all things Linux. Will a Mac help me with this, or will it make things worse for me due to minor differences in Mac's OS?

Solution 1:

It certainly won't make things worse. There are numerous similarities between OS X and Linux and if you're beginning to dabble with OS X, the minor differences won't be relevant right now. Things like the bash shell, scripting tools, and many Linux shell applications are all available for OS X.

I regularly develop on OS X on my MacBook and run my programs on a Linux workstation. There will be a point where you'll need to learn the differences between Linux and OS X (e.g. how services are managed) but by the time you get to that point, you'll know where to find the information you need.

Solution 2:

Certainly.

OS X is a POSIX compliant UNIX based OS built on top of the XNU kernel, that includes many standard Unix tools that can be explored from Terminal.app. Because of the POSIX compliance many programs written for Linux can be recompiled to run on it.

The Fink and MacPorts projects can help extend the toolsets you can learn with as well.