Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
[snip good advice]
Oh and don't forget virtualization is your friend in learning!
VMware workstation, Parallels, Virtual Box, Xen, Hyper-V, they're all good for learning!
Create a VM per-distro, see how each distro installs, see how each is managed. Take snapshots and play around with their configs, see how they break, see if you can fix them, if not revert to the snapshot. Get your feet wet.
May I suggest that, if you really want to learn how a Linux system gets put together, and works, then get a copy of Linux from Scratch and build your own?
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Mike