I am fairly new to *nix/linux and I have just installed SuSe 8.2. I am wondering what skills would be good to learn. I know that I will need to learn how to write scripts, but what scripting languages should I learn. I greatly appreciate any and all comments.
As far as scripting goes, I would suggest that you teach yourself KORN shell.
I find KORN to be somewhat of a forgiving language....which is nice for a beginner like myself. KORN is also quite versatile as it allows to interact with shell commands and also embed sed/awk code.
Yes, especially because SuSE gives you bash by default. I believe korn shell is not even installed by default, so for a new user who are still not familiar with how to install additional software RPMs from the 6(?) CD set very likely a korn shell is not for him/her.
The SuSE manuals are considered among one of the best introductory guides in all Linux documentation. I have a set of old (7.2) manuals lying around and find that you can learn quite a good deal from them. Starting with a GUI is easier, but don't forget to learn command line (e.g. bash) also as you proceed! The SuSE manuals do not teach you these things, though.
The Bourne shell (usually /bin/sh) is the only shell universally available. Some systems don't install csh (which no one has recommended yet). Bash is convenient and ksh-like (with enhancements?). Zsh is what I use for a UI. But I always script in sh.
If a problem is too complex for sh, I drop into ruby or perl, but that's a different level of complexity.