[dgfitz]

I think that would be a great foray, yes. If you understand how to poke around the filesystem (cd, ls), manipulate the filesystem (cp, mv, rm, mkdir), how to search (find, grep), and how to edit and save a file (vi/vim {yes there are a plethora of linux text editors, vi is ubiquitous, which is the only reason I learned it}) you’re in really great shape.

The best part is, you can learn this subset of tools in a day, a week at worst.

[lycopodiopsida]

There is nothing linux-specific in this list, you describe learning UNIX and could do it on any *BSD, including macOS. I would agree that knowing you way around unix is very helpful, having some specific linux knowledge is worth very little if your job does not consist of managing linux machines. And even then you will require a lot of distro-specific knowledge.