[wilhow]

Solving a problem is the easiest to learn and retain that knowledge. Get an account in development EC2 which I think is free, or something cheap in the cloud like prgmr.com and build a linux server and learn. Deploy your application manually and solve all the issues you face. Linux is so wide spread these days, there are very little that you can't an answer on the web.

I say CentOS or Ubuntu (w/out UI) is a good way to start. Those 2 distributions have many step by step solutions scattered on the web such as stackoveflow and forums posts. Slackware, Arch Linux or Gentoo are great for their target audience. IMHO they provides very little out of box for a noob and it's very easy to get lost in what you can set, break and/or fix. There is nothing more demoralizing that spending 2 days digging around the web for a problem that has numerous answers and you've no idea what everyone is on about.

Books are very useful guidelines, but getting your hands dirty is how you'll really learn.

[corin_]

I'd suggest avoiding prgmr (who I think are awesome by the way) and opting for somewhere like Linode, just because it makes it so easy to wipe your VPS with a clean image and start again. (I'm talking specific to this thread, not as advice for everyone.)

[wilhow]

For me that is a very helpful feature. I've done installation many times and I've done them to a cheap machine at home so I'm quite familiar with the process. It's the ins and outs of the linux that I was not able to get for a long time. Being able to wipe a VPS with a clean image allows me to quickly start over when I have mess things up so bad.