Designer eager to become Developer

I have put together a few web pages (html,css,jQuery) but am very new to Web Development. I have only done front-end design. I am comfortable with Linux but don't know Apache or MySQL but am in the process of learning Rails as my framework. Will learning Rails be better then learning a LAMP stack for getting a website online? Or am I comparing apples and oranges? And what would be some different hosting options for each?