I just turned a Windows guy onto Linux Mint and he's having considerable success with it, in spite of being a total novice at Linux. I just came up with a very few things that it might be helpful for a new Linux user to know, regardless of how easy recent distros have made things:
1. Watch the update symbol and do updates every time they're noted in the word balloon notice thingie. Updates are how security holes are controlled in the *nix world, both for the OS and for many applications.
2. Read the manual pages (man command in Terminal) on the commands su and sudo (super user). Some distributions restrict the root account, preferring that you operate as a regular user most of the time. When needed, elevate yourself using su or sudo, then giving the password requested, which will be either the user password or a separate one for 'root'.
3. Use the locate command to do really quick searches in case you lose a file. Remember that it uses a database, which is freshened up (as root) by invoking 'updatedb'.
4. Use apt-get to do fast updates from Terminal. The sequence is
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
(y for yes to continue or to accept additional required updates)
Of course, the software updater app is there for you as well.
5. If an app, game, utility or other program is present in the distribution's software repository, apt-get is the command to use. It's simply
apt-get install (name of file)
6. Grab an outboard hard drive for backups. Remember that you'll need to reformat it in whatever file system your distro uses; the "format" command is easy to find in the GUI.
7. Speaking of GUI issues, you have choices that outfits like Mac and Windows don't give you. They only have one desktop environment, whereas Linux offers bushels of them. Gnome and KDE are the most common full-featured ones, while there are others like Enlightenment and FluxBox that cater to older and slower systems (requiring less resources to run).
Hope this helps!
