New to it all, looking for info

Hey all
Have a PS3 fresh out of box, no updates.
No real experience jailbreaking, modding. Not even sure what the proper terms are for what I want to do.

My first experience with any of it was a week or so ago with ai.
It was already updated to 4.3u (it was my girlfriends and we only used it for netflix, no games, so I didnt even think about why not to update it).
Only experience I had with it was with Letterbomb. Got HBC on it, was attempting to roll it back to 3.x to get the emulators and mplayer to work better (not sure if that actually would have helped). Made it to 4.1 until our power went out while I was using dopmii and I bricked it.

So no real understanding of what I was doing. So no real experience to speak of.

Wondering where the best place to start is. Really I'd probably be happy just being able to 1. run linux on it, but also be able to use the playstation network (or however you play online with friends) and play games.

Where to start, which tutorials, or any reading or advice on the subjec tin general not even just ps3s would be really appreciated.

Thanks