Well done! Your curiosity will be rewarded. I would recommend learning some basic bash to start services, read the logs. Basic cli can really help with debugging when you encounter some new challenges (journalctl command for example).
Another thing I can recommend: When I started with Linux I bought a raspberry and used it without a gui to experiment so my shenanigans were less risky on my main pc. This was 3 years ago and now I’m working at a tech company managing 200 servers because the curiosity and empowered feeling never went away.