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1. Get this book: Invaluable. Read it, from start to finish. It's that good.
2. Get this other book: also very good.
3. Check out your local Linux/BSD/UNIX user group: google is your friend for this. For instance, NYCBUG is very good if you live in New York City. Also Linux International has got a lot of conference-related announcements.
4. Pick a Linux distribution, any Linux distribution really, and try to find forums and User's group in your area. Then, do the same for another distro. And another. Lather, rinse, repeat.
5. For complete newbies, Linux Questions and The Linux Documentation Project are invaluable places to start. For more advanced advice, check out Unix Guru universe, or the O'Reilly web site.
6. Finally, do check the local university and/or community college to see if they offer some sort of training
   

where can a get the latest version of BOB or MSDOS?

Bob - Clippy. Or download the Agent SDK and build your own Bob.

MSDOS - cmd.exe in its latest incarnation as a UI. Win32 as a programming interface.

Xenix - As you would know, if you had a clue as to what you were talking about, is that Xenix was never available to end users as Xenix. Talk to your vendor if you feel you need to upgrade.

I am surprised no one has mentioned Xenix

Xenix FAQ

I would have thought the marraige of SCO, Microsfot and UNIX would make the avarage /. reader's blood boil.

Scary as it sounds, someone actually did make an OGRE computer game once. Lemme dust off my old bookmarks here...

UGU's outdated software archive. Here it is. I had to go through a lot of trouble to get it to compile and run correctly on my machine, but it does work. This is a good example of why you shoudln't call low level operating system calls.

UGU offers a Unix tip of the day at http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?tip.today - that should keep you in tips for a while.

If a computer had emotions and I installed all these applications at the same time, it would be begging me to format its hard drive to stop the suffering.

Computers DO have emotions, didn't you know? That's why Windows blue-screens all the time. It's not the OS, it's the computer fscking with the memory to rearrange the bits to read "HELP ME." Unlike with people, a computer's emotional problems are easy to cure. :)

I like Unix Guru Universe (UGU). It's a place I usually go when trying to solve a problem, however I've wandered through some of their links and info contained on the site and liked it.

Unix Hints & Hacks has a chapter or two devoted to this subject. It talks about interviewing candidates, and also about being a candidate. Worthwhile reading, even if most of the stuff in the book is for beginners. UH&H is, I believe, a compendium of best practices collected from Unix Guru Universe.

well, the unix guru universe site has made a bunch of binary decisions, and they have a list of unix flavors *including* Mac OS X.

Some thoughts from the history camp ...

From the comp.unix.xenix.sco FAQ:

Xenix is Unix -- or at least one flavor of it. In the late 70's, Microsoft licensed the Unix sources from AT&T and ported them to a number of platforms. In those days, AT&T would license the Unix software but not the Unix name, thus each company had to invent their own name. Microsoft picked Xenix. Microsoft did not sell Xenix to end users. Instead, they licensed the software to OEMs (Intel, Tandy, Altos, SCO, etc.) who provided a finished end-user package. Microsoft no longer supports Xenix, and in fact never even offered a 286 or 386 version.

Ahem, Microsoft.

A good starting point where I learned a great deal is the Trinity OS document. Also try Unix Guru Universe for all things *nix. The information is out there but don't expect to become an expert overnight. As a *nix user of 15 years I still feel like a newbie in a lot of situations. IMHO thats what makes it fun;-)