Nowadays, any computer can do almost anything you can think of - from solving a calculus problem to compiling a program. How it gets there, and how hard it is to get there is another question entirely. When it comes to different platforms, such as Windows or OSX or Debian, we often think of them like this: Windows is unstable. Mac is expensive. Linux is just hard. However, it can be compared to giving a problem to multiple people and see them work out the answer. Doing something on one platform is usually not much more difficult than it would seem on another platform. It's just another way of working it out.

I am very lucky to have many computers to test things on and play around with. My main computer keeps switching between Ubuntu 10.10/11.04 and Windows 7 over time (indecisive, like me), my netbook is running Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop, our server is running Ubuntu 11.04 Server, and my father gave me his MacBook (running Mac OS X Lion). I've also used VMware Workstation and Oracle VirtualBox for about fifty more operating systems that I will probably never use again, but were fun to try.

The best way I've found to get used to a new operating system is to keep an open mind and see how you can answer some basic questions. For example, how do you access the Internet? How do you access the shell? What word processor does it use, and what is the equivalent of Notepad/gedit/TextEdit? Do certain programs have a version for that operating system? The more questions you answer, the more you become comfortable you become using it.