afcbob - You can download redhat at https://www.redhat.com/fedora/ and its free. You will find great online support for the os and it should run even on an old pII in the 300mhz range.

Before you get into live servers, its a great idea to play with one at home. I have servers in a datacenter, but I also have a dozzen or so at home tha I run aplication on and use for development. The best way to lean is to just do it.

If you use a machine at home, you can always reinstall the o/s and start over again when you make a major mistake. And with root access and no idea what you are doing, that is inevitable.

You do not have to spend money to learn and the redhat comes with x-windows if you are gui limited. It might be easier to learn with the gui than from a command line on a hosted server.

try a free all in one hosting panel

http://www.thezpanel.com/