BleepingComputer.com: help with using Linux

I just recently bought a new hp mini note 2133 and now i'm stuck. I did the basic set up on it but now that it's all ready to go i've found myself a bit lost because i've never used linux before. I'm not really sure where to go from here but i can't even connect to the internet on it, i'm beginning to get frustrated and the whole point of buying this new hp was so i could have a small portable computer to take back and forth to school. if i can figure all this out it would be nice and i've heard there's a way to convert linux to windows which for me would work 100% better because it's what i'm familiar with but to start off i'd just like to be able to connect to the internet and i can't even seem to be able to do that. someone please help!

Ok first off... Make sure you have the drivers for your NIC... Secondly, if the internet connection is not made on start up; in your terminal type "dhclient" to force your dhcp client to get a connection, then type "ifconfig" to see if you are connected... (btw dhclient is the more used dhcp client, though there are others)

how do i know if i have drivers for the NIC?

What linux distro are you using? For some you can probably find it going through the gui, some you have to find on your own... Plus most of the time, you don't need the correct drivers, cause it will still work... Just depends on the distro... Also did you try the commands I said from before?

it's a SuSe and i tried the commands but it just said command not found.

hhmm I thought SuSe used dhclient, but here is something I found... http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/894/2/
That should help you