The OP has clarified that he simply wishes to focus on high-speed PCB layout; ripping his hair out troubleshooting an embedded OS on an untested platform is merely of secondary concern.
I'm well aware of Beagleboard and other ready to use PCBs. The project I'm gonna work on, in reality, has no hard budget constraints and specific deadline, so I wanted to take the chance and learn some stuff 
That is a very good goal. I also try to do projects to gain more hands-on knowledge. Its never a waste of time or money.
Concerning the Beagle board: last year I designed a board based on the Omap (or whatever TI calls them this week) used on the Beagle board for one of my customers. The customer used the Beagle board to prototype their software. Once they got to the point where they needed their own hardware they called me. These kind of boards are not easy to get right though. You'll need to read a lot about routing high speed signals and the routing guidelines of the chip. The next step is to think about how to organize the layers of the PCB and how the power is distributed. It is good to work out placement of major components before entering the diagram in a CAD package. On top of all that you'll find that most quick turnover / pooling PCB manufacturers can't make boards with traces/clearances less then 0.1mm. You'll need to choose the packages carefully.
Another thing is getting the right equipment. You'll find frequencies up to 200MHz on these kind of boards. Having a >300MHz oscilloscope (even if its analog) will help a lot.
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