Is there some “getting started” tutorial on how to use this? Can’t find anything at this website or googling. Heard great things about this, use Office constantly & hate it, but now I’m just looking at a bunch of folders with obscure names. Help!!
As you neither inform on your OS and LibO version nor on what exactly you did and what you got, it is rather difficult to give you precise answer.
Depending on the OS there are program or application folder in which you can find icons for LibO, Writer, Calc, Impress, Math, Base. You need to locate these folders and click on them and the application starts. Clicking on Writer starts a new text document, clicking on Calc starts a new spreadsheet, etc.
You can download the free manual for LibO here: http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/
Also the documents are continously updated they might always be a bit behind the latest versions. A natural unavoidable matter. However, what you can read in the manual covers more than 99% and for the rest you can ask a question here.