I gotta admit, I made the same assumption a few years back -- I've actually been a Unix-head for years and years, but I'd assumed that every pocketable device out there had some unique wacky OS. (I owned an iPhone for years, and enjoyed it for what it did, but never really got into messing with it.) So a few years ago my brother showed me his N810, and I just figured it was yet another iOS clone of some sort. I was totally amazed when I discovered that it had an honest-to-god shell, and all the commands I'd been using for the past two decades worked just fine on it. I've been hooked on the Nokia NITs ever since then...

Yeah, unfortunately, this is the biggest hassle with Unix -- learning it really demands more of your time up-front than any other modern operating system. To be honest, though, this is a side effect of the fact that it provides the user with more control than any other OS; and in order to make effective use of that power, you've got to deal with a lot more options and downright grungy details than in other systems.