Linux +

It's on my to do list , but it might be worth checking out the LPI cerfiication. There are 3 levels, with 2 exams per level to gain certification.

LPI Certification

There are a number of big names behind, or at least paying atention to it:

From their mailing list:

The IBM developerWorks tutorials for LPIC-1 and LPIC-2 are available free to anyone with a browser. Registration (at no cost) is required. Once you're in a tutorial you can save the PDF version (A4 or US Letter sizes available) if you wish.

Free IBM Training Manuals

tck wrote:

I did my first part last week LPI 171-101 (can be tricky)
booking for follow up test next week.

It reports that Linux+ is a more introductory cert. (6 months work experience)
Where LPI 1 (2 years exp..) LPI-2 (4 years exp..)

Im not sure i'd pay the money to get a linux+ cert after getting LPI.

Agreed... I did LPI 101 a couple of weeks ago and it was a lot trickier than I had expected. I bought the 'in a nutshell' book and read through all of the 101 section. I thought it was all easy enough, and was expecting 100% in the sections that I knew everything about, but a lot of the questions refer to the exact syntax of commands, so it is worth doing some proper study for a few days even if you have 2+ years experience.

By the end of the first section (about shared libraries and stuff) I was starting to consider the possibility that I would fail, but from then on it got much better. Made me decide not to book 102 for the following week though - I'm going to study it a bit first.

I agree about the Linux+ - once you've got the LPI Level 1, I can't see how much actual benefit you could gain from Linux+. I don't know about how each is recognised by the employers, but the LPI exam is good for learning the material - I wish I had done it a year ago, because it showed me a lot of basic stuff that I never knew.