I would not suggest linux from scratch as a way to learn linux.
Yes it is where he wants to be NEXT year...

My approach is to try the live cd...
Push all the buttons, turn all the knobs and drive a few distros around the block...
See what features you like, want or need before building one from the ground up....

That will work, but an even more elegant solution (if you have the disk space) is to create a separate partition, formatted as FAT32, for your mp3s and any other data that you would like to access from both Windows and Linux. Linux fully supports reading and writing to FAT32 partitions, so if you centralize your shared data on such a partition, you won't have to keep separate copies of the data for use in Linux and Windows. If you just need to read data from a Windows partition, Linux does support doing so with NTFS partitions as well as FAT32, but writing to NTFS isn't really fully supported yet.


You create separate partitions for each of them during the installation process; different distros have different installation routines, so the actual steps you need to take will depend on the specific distro you install. In general though, if you choose to perform a "Workstation" or "Basic" installation, the partitioning will be done for you automatically, and the distro's installation manual should tell you what that default partition scheme will be. However, if you perform a "Custom" install, or if the installer offers an "Advanced" partitioning option, you will be able to over-ride the default scheme and create whatever partitions you desire.

If you're up to it, I'd suggest doing an Expert install. This gives you very fine control over exactly what packages/programs are installed, and it also allows you to install components which, although you'll need them down the line, are not always installed by default. The kernel source/headers and other development software necessary for compiling/installing programs from source code falls into the later category.

Learning linux takes some hard work and study. If you want to learn and get certified, I would recommend http://www.linuxselfstudy.com. You can take the certification courses on your own time, because they are on-line and interactive. I shopped around alot and they offer the best deal out there, ($1000s less than their competitiors), but they are still highly rated. They have some great testimonials too about their linux training. It worked for me!