First you might want to check out some of the recommended books:
http://www1.fatbrain.com/FindItNow/S...HAN515&store=1 http://www1.fatbrain.com/FindItNow/S...HAN515&store=2
These are all the ones that have been recommended in this forum for various subjects. You will find some good introductory books there -- Unix in a Nutshell, Unix Shell Programming, etc.
You can get Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP for free from the Internet. If you do not have a high-speed connection it will take you a long time to download everything you need. I recommend buying a CD distribution of Linux such as RedHat, Suse, Mandrake or Debian. Try
http://www.cheapbytes.com for the lowest-price CD's. Buy the official RedHat package if you want phone and/or email tech support -- that one runs about $30. You can easily dual-boot one of these systems, the install process will walk you through the set-up.
HTH