This tutorial makes the assumption that you have little or no experience of Linux or any other UNIX-like operating system. It will take you through the basics of Linux, seen through the eyes of a new user who has just visited the system administrator and been given the login name and password to an account on a Linux machine.
This is an ideal situation. However, I realise that there will be many readers who are not only new users but who also have to act as system administrators at the same time. The trick in this case is to interleave the material in this section with other tutorials so that you perform the minimum necessary installation and system administration functions while you learn the basics. In fact, this is not such a daunting task, because many Linux distributions now available have default configurations for most things that make them fully usable, straight out of the box. You will still need to keep your wits about you, however, as some parts of the installation and configuration of a full Linux system remain a little tricky.