Thanks, Neil, for a great and expanded answer to my question. Well as you can read I am not that into server/hosting yet (which basically is why I want to start up). I have always used payed webhotels etc. but I want to expand my knowledge and get started on Linus servers.
You are completely right though, the purpose (when not hosting a website) is to run an http server like apache and then browse and preview the pages and programs I create.
Thanks again for the answer