I was looking at buying the "Suse Linux 9 Bible" for my son, but have since read some very conflicting reviews and I was wondering if any one here using Suse and the Suse Bible could give me a better idea.

I am thinking of putting him through a Novell / Suse course and I thought this book might be a good start.

floppy

I think if your going to teach newcomers to Linux, go neutral with them. Don't teach the specifically one distro but the difference between many.. but that's just my opinion. I think the distro specific books are good for those that are focusing on one distro at one particular time.. but if you want them to learn Linux overall, go with a book that actually covers Linux as a whole OS, not just Redhat, Suse or any other..

in my experience, the [blank] bible books often overlook many aspects of... everytihng. re-reading them after you know what you're doing will illustrate exactly what's wrong with them.. I can't really be specific.. but I don't recommend them.

Personally I'd consider the SuSE documentation to be top notch. It's worth buying the distro just for the docs. You can also read the SuSE books online -- J.W.

Yes I'm really looking for some decent books that will help him gain a good working knowledge of Linux ( and BSD ) in general and also Suse in particular.

To give you an idea
the L+ course is $ 2950 ( Aust )
and the Novell / Suse CLP is $ 7670 plus exams $ 177 ( Aust )
so you can see from the prices that they are not something I want him to have to do a second time, so I am looking for a few good books that will carry him through.

This is still a few years away as he is still schooling, in fact we home-school so I want to include this into his curriculum. He has been working through the "Sams Teach yourself * linux in 24 hours" which have been a good start but now he needs something a little more 'heavier'. He helps me look after our home network of eight computers but he will need better experience so I figure he can volunteer later on at some kind of charity or school or whatever.

BTW thanks JW for those links

floppy

The 2 best all-around Linux books (I think) are RUTE by Paul Sheer (freely downloadable) and O'Reilly's Running LInux both of which do a great job with fundamentals, and are not focussed exclusively on one particular distro. Happy reading -- J.W.