What distribution are you using?
You should use something like putty as your SSH (NOT telnet, that's not secure) client. You can download it from
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~s.../download.html .
Depending on your distribution there might be some good manuals. Since most newbees start with RedHat, you should check
http://www.redhat.com/docs/ for some very good manuals.