need to be pointed in the right direction

I'm newer than a newbie to linux,I've been wanting take this journey for sometime now,I've picked up a new second hard drive and my version of mandrake 9.1 is on its way via UPS. aside from the installation , were can someone like myself, who knows nothing go to get started, I've done some reading at some forums and to be honest its mostly all greek to me but I'm determined, any and all help will be greatly appreciated,I'll thank you all in advance

P.S. I think I know how Dorothy felt in OZ!!

you can check out my "Easy to Use Linux Guide" - a lot of it is based on my experience with red hat, but most of it can be used to any linux distro.

the link is below in my sig. I am more of a red hat guy, but you can pm me if you want if you need help. This forum is pretty good too, there are some knowledgeable people on it.
Good luck and welcome to linux! :D

Thanks, I was just there and its going to be a great help! I have alot of ??? but dont know which ones need be to ask first, one question I have is what programs in linux are the equal to excel and word in windoze

That would be OpenOffice.org (yes, it is actually named OpenOffice.org).

yes, openoffice.org is a great program and to add to dolda's response, you can save your files in linux format and also in windows format while you are in linux :D
if you use red hat 9, it comes with it

www.linuxdoc.org many goodies are there...