However, I want to learn more, and go deeper into the world of sysadmin/devops, and learn how to deploy Rails apps directly to EC2, and set up all the configuration myself, instead of Elastic Beanstalk abstracting it away from me.
I've heard about configuration management tools like Chef etc.. but my UNIX and Linux skills are almost non-existent, so I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction, on what to begin learning first, and any resources you found useful.. thanks!