lots of replies
 

This is a good one, youll get a million replies off this question:) AS far as referance goes, it's all over the internet, but if you do want to pay for a book, linux in a nutshell is pretty good (o' reilly publishing) or Linux user's guide (franklin, Beedle and Assosiates). The thing I've found about buying linux books is that ist's really good for helping you get a general feeling for things. By reading the book you will be able to find your way around the system, but it will not tell you the quircks about your particular distrobution, and it won't be up to date becouse linux updates so much. This becomes most apparent when trying to get a driver up and running or somthing like that, but the internet will tell you these things. If you search the wikis, and forums (like this one) you will find what you need. You can also try freenode (use an irc client to goto irc.freenode.net) a lot of the projects ave channels there, so if you are having touble with one program (example: firefox crashes when downloading somthing) goto freenode.
The things I rmember not understanding at first were
1: Permissions
2: URPMI / synaptic package managers
3: kernal modules (inparticular, wifi took forever for me to get running becouse I didn't understand modules)
4: X, and how it is a "server" running on top of the kernal to serve you your graphical enviroment.

If you are like me, google those and that will help you a lot.
NOTE: console is a terminal is a command prompt.

The first install disk will have a couple pdf manuals. It will cover some of the software, and touch a bit on how the system works. It always takes time learning a new system so don't get discouraged.

Also, the MCC system can install programs for you. A program like thunderbird may be on one of the disks, which would save you the problem of downloading. If not, there is a website, http://rpm.pbone.net, that you can use to locate packages ( RPMs ) that are built for your particular distribution. This is a good way of finding an rpm package that will be installed properly on your system.

As for the printer setup, you could try using mandrake GUI configuration. Another option is using CUPS. If cups is running, you can configure the printing system using CUPS' web based interface. Try pointing your browser to "http://localhost:631".

It has been a while since I used Mandrake Linux. I seem to remember that there was a package called something like "wizdrake" that would install configuration wizards used by MCC. After that, it may be easier to set up printer sharing using the Samba Server configuration wizard. Mandriva, may install this by default now, I don't know. Doing a search in MCC (rpmdrake) for 'wiz' will probably display the package I am referring to.