Anyone have any recommendations?
Learn stuff that's actually useful instead of wasting time chasing bullshit "certifications".
In roughly 6 months, I will be looking for a better job, and I want the qualifications to get it. If anyone can help, I will greatly appreciate it.
I got a reasonably well-paying job doing stuff I enjoy in a great work environment, and all I had to back up my skills beyond graduating high school was a passion for computers and a few contributions to open-source software. Granted, I spent a year doing level 1 support before I was able to move up the ladder a bit, but I took the job knowing that there was room to move up.
If you know what you're doing, you don't need certifications. If you don't know what you're doing, no certification will save you.
I am absolutely willing to learn Lunix, as I have ample VM capabilities on my current machine,
If you're only willing to learn Unix, you're going to have a very hard time keeping up. There are those of us who use Unix all the time because we enjoy it, and as a natural result of that we learn new things about it; and then there are those who use it because they think they need to know it in order to get a good job. You strike me as the latter type, and being "willing" to learn to use it reinforces that impression.
I just have no idea of what I would need to know in the professional IT field.
Irrelevant. This thread is about IT certifications, which have absolutely nothing to do with what you know or don't know.