I'm a windows (C++/.NET) developer. I want to migrate to UNIX systems because I'm tired of windows shit. Endless MS stupid silly buggy SDKs kill me every day and I'm not really enjoying programming like it was before.
My question is what is the possible roadmap. Any chance to find a job in UNIX area with over 8 years of windows-only experience?
If you are trying to escape vendor lock in. Go ahead.
But, im sorry to tell you this, Microsoft DO bend over backwards to make developers lives far easier than they should be. Applications written for Windows 95 still run on Windows 7, and run well.
Learn C++. Its the language of cross platform development. Download an environment like Eclipse or Code::Blocks, and experience the development environments you might end up using for Linux development.
Windows developers have it good.
Generally speaking, yes, of course! At least I've never seen any "no windoze lusers please" in Unix-related jobs postings :-)
However, I would recommend you to get at least a year of experience (half a year as a bare minimum) of Unix development. For that, simply install some Linux distro (Ubuntu or CentOS for example) and play with it for a while to learn the libraries and APIs. As you are an experienced programmer, it shouldn't be hard for you to learn another technology stack.
So, just play for a while with the things that you want to develop for money, which may be networking programming, GUIs or anything else.
Another option is to take a look at some of modern cross-platform stacks, like Java, Ruby or Python.
Hope this helps :-)