Ah, web development. I see. Well, that's actually 90+% the same on Windows for most use-cases. For example, if I were starting a small web app in Linux I'd probably use Python and Bottle. I'd do the same on Windows. To be clear: I'm not recommending that you use Windows to deploy web applications in Python. I'm just saying that you can develop the applications on Windows and deploy on Linux with very little hassle.
Unless you actually care about native Linux applications, or specific performance-related features like Linux's epoll (or BSD's kqueue), then you can definitely jump into "the Linux way" of web development with Cygwin and either Python or Ruby. I haven't used Ruby since 2005, but in Python most of the difference between Windows development and Linux development is details of the os and sys modules (anything else has to do with stupid details of threading performance).
On a second reading, it sounds like you might be conflating getting beyond .NET with Linux development. It's entirely possible to learn Python or Ruby web development on Windows, though I'd strongly suggest either using a full Cygwin installation or at least Unix Tools for Windows (http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/).
Linux is worth learning, but it's not the same thing as (for example) Python web development. They're mostly independent. Things like Node.js are still mostly *nix-only (last time I looked), but I'm sure that will change over time. On the positive side, you can get Haskell/GHC for Windows ;-)
Unless you actually care about native Linux applications, or specific performance-related features like Linux's epoll (or BSD's kqueue), then you can definitely jump into "the Linux way" of web development with Cygwin and either Python or Ruby. I haven't used Ruby since 2005, but in Python most of the difference between Windows development and Linux development is details of the os and sys modules (anything else has to do with stupid details of threading performance).
On a second reading, it sounds like you might be conflating getting beyond .NET with Linux development. It's entirely possible to learn Python or Ruby web development on Windows, though I'd strongly suggest either using a full Cygwin installation or at least Unix Tools for Windows (http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/).
Linux is worth learning, but it's not the same thing as (for example) Python web development. They're mostly independent. Things like Node.js are still mostly *nix-only (last time I looked), but I'm sure that will change over time. On the positive side, you can get Haskell/GHC for Windows ;-)