Hat Linux Red

I would suggest not worrying about the certs unless it's a job requirement or something. Concentrate on actually learning the system, anyone can pass a test. source

I've run linux in vmware and on virtual PC, it's okay, I mainly do it when I need two or three instances running at the same time, in the case of learning about some networking technique or another. I intend to learn how to do network authentication on Linux this way at some point. source

The printed manuals that come with SuSE are quite good. I've also found O'Reilly 'Linux in a nutshell' and 'Running Linux' to be quite good. source

You can download the copy of the ISO file and then open it up with your program of choice and remove or add some files. Not every kind of file allows editing like this, but its easy to insert startup scripts. Then burn the new image and hopefully you now have a custom live CD. Ultimate ISO works well for this and I think Magic ISO will also. source

I jumped the Winders ship maybe three years ago and never looked back. Tried all flavors but settled on Ubuntu before making the switch. Don't know what will happen when I finally upgrade as I've heard dialup support on newer releases sucks. Might have to look elsewhere but it will still be some form of Linux. source