Well, there's a whole lot of information that's a matter of software, and a whole lot of software that's a matter of information. Not all of it is bite-sized. Some of it is great for keeping things of information and things of documentation managed.
Ubuntu Linux is a non-commercial, wholly free/open source Linux distribution, which looks like it should be pretty easy to get going with, for a regular desktop setup.
I've used the Debian that it's based on. I trust it like anything.
I'm not ready to run tech-support about Ubuntu. So, I've been wary of mentioning it, here. It's there, though. They also have support forums, there.
Linux is a pretty cooperative sort of thing, generally. It's also immensely useful.
In the text/more: Some related reference things.
Linux Journal tends to have some pretty helpful, somehow introductory information about things. It should be rather helpful, there, for making sense of things, in and about Linux. I might recommend that one would search their site, first, for an unknown keyword/topic about Linux, if one would be wonderng on such.
Even with Ubuntu, the documentation of the Debian Documentation Project may be worth reading through.
The Linux Documentation Project has a good, big portion of information. One might want to go on any more contemporary references that one would find, of course.
Debian -- and certainly, also Ubuntu -- have a great number of documentation items, available -- some of which come as part of a software package, and some of which are available as separate packages. (One might note, these are free/open source software pacakges. They are not little bits of Windowzy spyware or whatever. Neither are they quite "free beer". They're available, though. Supposing that all of the Ubuntu packages, furthermore, will use the same Debconf stuff that the original Debian packages use, then -- in short -- all of it should be pretty easy to configure, when one would have an enough-clue, about what one would be configuring.)
Pretty much every piece of user-visible software, in Linux, comes with its own documentation. All of it being free software, not all of the documentation is guaranteed to be greatly in-depth, but one can certainly make due, anyway.
Now, for general discusssion, coinciding about free/open source software, Newsforge may tend to be a great place.
So, if you want to "turn your computer, metaphorically, into an 18-wheeler, or a sportcar, or a sporty eighteen wheeler, or something more than out-of-the-box {xyzzy}", there it is.
To say more than this might be to start sounding political about software, or to start seeming as if I'd invited political retort. So, enough said, I guess.
Well, one more thing
The introduction to the Debian User Reference Manual mentions something that is pretty important. I thought I'd reference it, here, this important, rather simple thing:
the general Unix principle, that there is always more than one way to do it.