Linux is known to be as a programmer’s OS i.e that the OS had been built by programmers for programmers. It is really a good system to learn programming on. The OS design is really neat and best of all its open. Everything is well documented . You know how and why a particular thing works and that’s what every programmer wants , coz programmers are inquistive by nature.
The best thing i like about is everything is file based. What this means is that almost everything on the OS is configurable by changing the right settings. If u know what exactly u are doing u can write u r own shell script for small tasks or write a full fledged program in u r favorite language to perform the function u need instead of depending on some external tools which will some other bells and whistles attached to it.
I have been a Visual basic programmer myself and i must say that i enjoy programming in Linux much greater than in Windows.
Its not necessary for u to be C or a C++ programmer to program under Linux. C or C++ is best suited for system level programming. There are lot of applications which can be written in a language such as Java. Many also prefer Python which is also a popular OO language.
So don’t worry, be Happy….Start Programming under Linux.