I'd say if you have a decent IT background and know the basics of how internet and software development works you should be fine with the side kicks you were talking about.

DevOps again is a generic term, it could mean a lot of different position and technology depending upon a company. But popularity wise , Chef , puppet , git , docker is the buzz these days.

I think DevOps is good career these days as companies move to cloud and develop / maintain their code themselves. A good DevOps I think always must know Linux at least to a basic level. Besides that understanding of database , programming paradigms and Networking is a must.