I just joined the Forum a few days ago! 
I have a mac book and decided to look under the hood. Low and behold, UNIX! To be honest, I know nothing about unix, but I want to learn. I have no real goals as of yet, other than to learn what I can. I do own a few domains hosted by a good company. Any sugestions as to what I should study first? Is there a "first project" that most UNIX users work on?
hello, fellojello!
You can find introductory tutorials with a google search (intro to unix).
But you can start by browsing the unix.com forum's very own:
http://www.unix.com/answers-to-frequently-asked-questions/13774-unix-tutorials-programming-tutorials-shell-scripting-tutorials.html
That would be a good start.
Apple has added some Mac specific commands and functions to what at one time was FreeBSD (er something...) and this Apple modified version of Unix is currently referred to as Darwin, which is available seperately without the Mac GUI.
FreeBSD lives on, of course, and is a fine Unix implementation in it's own right.
To get an idea of just what Unix flavors there are, and when... check out:
First thing to do is work out a strategy for backing your machine up. So if it gets zapped by lightening you can buy another machine and be back up and running within a couple of hours.
Hi fellojello,
I am also new to UNIX. Just got a MBP not too long ago and as it turns out I might need to learn to work in the Terminal for work so here I am.
For a Mac OS X Unix Tutorial see:
OSXFAQ - Technical News and Support for Mac OS X
Some additional Unix tools for Mac OS X can be found here:
(wget, tree, gnuplot, lynx, ...)
Cheers,
verno