[jcutrell]

I realize this is a very common set of answers, so here are a few more concrete things you could do.

- Go through http://railstutorial.org/

- Learn Git (this taught me all of the more important unix commands for my everyday work)

- Check out Coursera courses, like this one: https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalmedia or this one: https://www.coursera.org/course/posa (two very different courses, both very informative)

- If you aren't keen on Coursera, check out Udacity

- Get a VM running so you don't have to worry about the damage you might cause running sudo stuff. This is very big; if you are intimidated because you don't want to cause damage to your machine, build a sandbox first. (Assuming you can set up a VM. If not, check something like this out: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2011010701239RVLFSW)