ResearchComing to Linux from Windows - your first primer
So you heard about this Linux thing and decided to give it a try. Or maybe you're in a situation where you need to use Linux at work. With Linux usage growing every year, and more government and professional usage, users find themselves in this situation every year - I know I did as a home user, switching from Windows to Linux about the time that Windows 98 came out. Linux will seem very different, and a few explanations are in order.
Complexity - your first time in a Linux distribution will seem baffling after your Windows experience. A Linux system just comes with so many options and programs! This is because it's all free software. Imagine if Windows was free and all the programs that ran on it were, too. They would naturally include a lot of stuff with it. That's the overwhelming feeling you have, because you now have ten times as much operating system as you used to have. For instance, Windows by default comes with an average of four games like Solitaire, Hearts, Freecell, and Minesweeper; by contrast, a Linux default install will come with about 30 games. The key here is to narrow down the options to one choice or another for each function or purpose, learn that well first, and then gradually check out the other programs as you go. When you meet something new that you've never seen before, it's usually easier to type the name of that program into a search engine and learn about it from there.
The User Philosophy - Windows is generally designed to assume at first that you don't know what you're doing. It hides anything potentially confusing and leads you by the hand. Linux, by contrast, pays a fantastic compliment to your intelligence - whatever you ask it to do, it does it and doesn't ask questions. The new user will be daunted at the vast power they hold - the whole system is open wide from the ground up, ready for you to dive in and mess with whatever you want to. For dealing with this, you should try to stick to the easiest choices like KDE or Gnome for a desktop. More importantly, make sure you're using it as a user and not in "root" - the system administrator - mode. When running as anything but root, the system will protect itself from your doing anything to break it. Only log into root to do things like installing new software or changing a system-wide setting - or better yet, leave the root functions to your system administrator.
The File System - coming to Linux from Windows and looking in the directories is like visiting a foreign country. There are directories with all these funny names - what do they all mean? And where is "Program Files"? The file system has actually been handed down all the way from the earliest Unix, and over time you will see that there are good reasons for it being that way. The only directory you need to worry about as a user is your home folder - within it, you can create you own directory structure and keep all your files there. Outside of that, the rest of the system is off-limits to all but the system administrator. The different directories outside your home directory are the dwelling places for the Linux system - the equivalent of what's in the C:\Windows folder on Windows.
Getting Help - Just like Windows, most programs with a menu at the top will have an entry called "help" - check there first. Next, there is usually a Help icon somewhere on the "taskbar" (Linux calls this a panel) recognizable by a life-preserver or question-mark icon. That accesses the documentation system. For the hardy, you must brave the command-line. Opening a terminal gives you a prompt similar in concept to the DOS prompt on Windows. Let's say you need to learn a program named "Foo". At the command-line, type "man foo" and you will have the command-line manual page browser opened to the foo "man" page. Arrow keys scroll it up and down, and 'q' exits. Type "info foo" will give you a different documentation browser - info files are much more complete and user-friendly. Scroll through this page the same way, and 'q' again exits. Last, 'apropos foo' acts like a little Google-search on the documentation system, useful if 'foo' itself isn't a program, but is a related concept for which you're sure that a program exists.
Take your time, and have fun exploring!