How many hours would it take to go through the LFS tutorial?

I'm trying to determine how appropriate it would be for me to learn Linux by building LFS using this tutorial

What is the time commitment involved in getting through this and if I'm already running Fedora 13 - Will I need to either

• reformat my machine

• keep a second partition for the dev version?

It depends, LFS is like making a reverse-autopsy.

Depending on your previous knowledges and what interest you much to modify, because just copying command lines from the text is useless and error prone.

LFS is like model making. It will not fly well, but it yours.

So let me send your question back. How many time do you have to put in your personal almost-working tweaked proudly-owned linux build?

A third alternative you didn't cover was installing LFS in a virtual machive such as KVM, so that your main system can keep running even while you puzzle how to put the guest together.