<p>I really enjoy Chrome, and the sheer exercise of helping a port would boost my knowledge-base.</p>
<p>Where do I start?</p>
<p>What are the fundamental similarities and differences between the code which will operated under Windows and Linux?</p>
<p>What skills and software do I need?</p>
<hr />
<h3>Note:</h3>
<p>The official website is Visual Studio oriented!<br />
Netbeans or Eclipse are my only options.<br />
I will not pay Microsoft to help an Open Source project.</p>

Read this article on Chrome and Open Source on Linux:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/09/02/google-unveils-chrome-source-code-and-linux-port
The Google V8 JavaScript Engine is also open source and available here if you want to contribute;
http://code.google.com/p/v8/
If you want to contribute on Chronium, here are the instructions:
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/contributing-code
Chromium
is an open-source browser
  project that aims to build a safer,
  faster, and more stable way for all
  Internet users to experience the web.
  This site contains design documents,
  architecture overviews, testing
  information, and more to help you
  learn to build and work with the
  Chromium source code.
Here is how you can get started:
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/getting-started
EDIT: Two more questions was added to the original question.
Building on Linux requires the following software:
Subversion >= 1.4
pkg-config >= 0.20
Python >= 2.4
Perl >= 5.x
gcc/g++ >= 4.2
bison >= 2.3
flex >= 2.5.34
gperf >= 3.0.3
libnss3-dev >= 3.12
On Ubuntu 8.04, you can fetch all of the above as follows:
```
```
$ sudo apt-get install subversion pkg-config python perl g++ bison flex gperf libnss3-dev
```
```
Note
: There is no working
  Chromium-based browser on Linux.
  Although many Chromium submodules
  build under Linux and a few unit tests
  pass, all that runs is a command-line
  "all tests pass" executable.