Firstly, before you rush out to buy books there is a lot of excellent documentation online. O'Reilly's Safari Books Online is also quite attractive if you are buying that many books - the cost of 10 print books will buy a few months subscription.

Why Fedora: the biggest difference between server distros is package management, and I find Debian, Ubuntu and Debian based distros package manager (apt) much easier to use than yum.

Another thing you may want to consider is doing what ever you do daily on a Linux desktop: it gives you familiarity rather more painlessly as you can gradually move from GUI to command line.

What are you aiming to manage? A shell account on shared hosting, or a VPS? A VPS can be simpler to manage because you can install everything using the package manager, rather than compiling locally or copying binaries around.

Thanks. Safari Books Online looks good, and they offer 10 day trial for free. I am a webmaster, and I work on xxx sites. I want to learn this, to be able to get any hosting plan (could be vps, or something like unmanaged - dedicated), install and configure everything that is needed, make sure it is secure, working, and so on.

Keywords that come to my mind would be - general linux, server administration, lamp, apache, nginx, mail server, ftp server, maintenance, security, fixing whatever needs to be fixied. In general, I would like to have knowledge on the level of person who works for a hosting company, and provides support to people online (tickets, chat, phone, and so on). I would be able to install whatever is needed, check anything that is needed (this could be through Google, I dont need to know 100% of the solutions to everything, before I start, I can always look it up, but I would know what what is what, and so on), fix any issues that may arise, and so on.

I want to be able to find good and inexpensive hosting plans, and set up websites for $100, instead of $300 or $350+ per month, for managed. There is some disount hosting companies, and most if not all of them are unmanaged... I want to read and learn about hosting too. I've been hosting my sites for 6+ years now, and I am familiar with a lot of aspects of this (hardware, networking, php / mysql, html, css, javascript, photoshop, social media, seo, wordpress), but I want to be able to be a "command line linux person" too.

I am planning to learn things that I dont know yet, as far as making websites. The topics would be - linux (and all related), landing page optimization, email marketing, excel, more social media, and could be more networking too. Also domaining (buying used domains, how things work as far as this topic, and so on). I want to learn all this, have a good general idea of all aspects of working on making sites (I already have 6+ years of full time experience, anyway), and then focus and specialize in seo, and nothing else (it is not possible to be good or even the best in multiple things, at the same time).

<ot>

I find Debian, Ubuntu and Debian based distros package manager (apt) much easier to use than yum.

But Yum is dead. It's all DNF from here on in. Have you given DNF a try?

Wouldn't CentOS make sense if he were looking to manage RedHat systems?

I am not sure, what the best choice is, as far as the distribution. Centos and Debian sound like it, to me. I would be looking at what is popular, all Western and EU countries, lets say. This way I can get a hosting plan, and pick what I am familair with. I am not sure if I already mentioned it here, but I dont want to work as system administrator, or anything like this (at least, not at this point). I need it only for my own hosting plan and my sites. I want to learn this and some other things now, as I have some time, but I want to specialize on adult seo, and even dating seo, after that (just work on this, 100% or close to, of the time, and this would be mostly, adding content, and getting links).

I am looking at the site of my hosting company, and I've had my websites there for 5+ years. They have:

CentOS 6.0 (32 Bit)
CentOS 6.x (64 Bit)
CentOS 5.7 (32 Bit)
CentOS 5.7 (64 Bit)
Debian 7.4 (32 Bit)
Debian 7.4 (64 Bit)
FreeBSD $0.00/month
Ubuntu 12.04 (32 Bit) $0.00/month
Ubuntu 12.04 (64 Bit) $0.00/month
Windows 2008R2 - x86_64 Standard $35.00/month
Windows 2012 - x86_64 Standard

So Centos, Debian, Ubuntu, really sound like the most popular names. I dont want to learn based on something less popular than this. Fedora sounds like another one, but it already less popular than this, something like the second level down.

Search on Amazon.com, in Books section:

Centos - 3,307 results
Debian - 1,247 results
Ubuntu - 1,576 results
Fedora - 1,205 results

I am not sure how good of an indicator it is, but Centos seems to be a good choice...

CentOS is certainly not a bad option. After playing around with a bunch of Linux distros the main difference I've found in general operation and maintenance is the different package managers. Of course there are other aspects, but if you're not planning to be a real server admin, then your choice should be fine.

I do tend to see a lot more Ubuntu and Debian offerings on the hosts I use. Ubuntu is Debian based so I use the apt-get on the cli for those sites. However, my biggest sites are all on FreeBSD which has been a real solid platform.

You should count Debian and Ubuntu as one in terms of popularity: Ubuntu is based on Debian and if you know one you know the other (I use Xubuntu on the desktop and Debian on servers). The same probably goes Centos (which is identical to Red Hat bar branding) and Fedora.

Red Hat tends to be more popular with big companies and sites ("Enterprise") and Ubuntu with people who want exactly what they have on their laptop. Otherwise its a matter of opinion, and they are all probably equally good (although I would not put Fedora on a production server).

Finally, if you know what distro you want to use on servers, learn that or a close relative.

@bill, thanks, I did not know about DNF and probably should give Fedora another try. Red Hat is a good company, even if I cannot afford their licenses!

Debian is considered the most conservative and best distro by many people, as has been noted ububtu is based on debian, as are many other distros.
red hat, centos and fedora are all based on the same code.
the 2 most common server installs are either debian or red hat based.

either choice is a good choice.

both have active communities that are helpful if you need help with stuff.

So not that we have the distros narrowed down, what's the best way to learn them the way that the OP asked? What level are you starting from? The edX people had a really good free course for an intro to Linux that lets you play with the major distros. However, that may too basic for you.

>>So now that we have the distros narrowed down, what's the best way to learn them the way that the OP asked?

i would suggest finding out how to install webmin ... and install it.(it is a web based interface for a linux system)

i should think virtually everything you need to do to manage a webserver, mailserver, database, firewall etc. can be done within the webmin interface.

[webmin.com...]

i would then just progress through the webmin menu (old school style on the left hand side of the webpage) and see what all the options are are how to do stuff, it is reasonable intuative.

once you've done that you'll have a clearer idea about what if anything else you need to know about.

(the reality is, if you are going to run your own server, you cannot know everything, ... if one day you have a serious problem, you will most likely have to get/pay for expert help anyway)

@xFoundry If you want to learn Linux, you should get an old laptop and build your linux distribution from scratch. Visit linuxfromscratch dot org for all the info. You will build a complete system from scratch using command line ONLY, you will understand how software is built (you will compile every program from sources), how a Linux system runs, how the kernel works, etc.
It will take some time but you will learn A LOT. If you want to learn, type in a shell for some weeks. If you want to manage your own server, forget about Windows, Buttons.. You only need how to use a shell.

Then if you want to move on server administration, you should focus on a good distribution and learn how it handles runlevels and software dependencies, services startup and its package manager. I recommend Debian, simple and robust, very well documented and supported. I also own a CentOS VPS, but sometimes it uses some weird configurations for network software and has some problems with YUM, the package manager, so I wouldn't recommend it. I never used Ubuntu but it should be similar to Debian.

I would also use Linux for daily work. I love Gentoo Linux + XFCE desktop manager. Distribution itself is a bit complex (lot of shell commands for updating software with Portage), but you can optimize everything for your own system with few configuration files. And you'll use a shell daily, which is good if you also own one or more servers.

I did this recently myself. I looked at the different training options including official RH training and one online one on one class from India that was way cheaper than RH. What I ended up doing was put an add in Craigslist. I hired a guy for $35 an hour. That was the cheapest option. He was a full time admin and did this in his free time. I learned a lot about Linux and real life situations.