I'm all for security and learning how things work and all, but again: I'm really not sure you want to dive in to a Linux distribution without a pull-and-install package manager like Ubuntu has. I've never used TAILS though, so maybe it's nothing like Linux from Scratch or Slackware or Archlinux or whatever else people are passing around these days. It's awfully hard to learn when you know so little you have no clue where to start though.