Getting Started

To start, I would recommend following Linode's Getting Started Guide to become familiar with deploying disk images and accessing your Linode.

Security

Next, there are a few extra steps you can take to significantly increase your servers security and help prevent against intrusion. I've linked my recommendations below.

1. Enable Key-Pair authentication

2. Disable remote root login and password authentication to prevent password brute forcing

3. Install Fail2Ban to block IPs after multiple failed login attempts

4. Set up a basic firewall with IPtables

Stacks and Sites

Once you have successfully secured your server, you will want to learn to configure a basic LAMP stack or LEMP stack to create a webs server, gain a basic understanding of using the command line and play around with some of the most commonly used Linux applications. A common step to follow building a web server is to Host a Website, however, where you go from here is entirely up to you!

Here are some other common ways to use a Linode.
Developing
Applications
Running a game server

Feel free to peruse our Docs for even more projects and guides!

Don't use something that costs you money and is exposed to the internet. Use a local VM until you're comfortable with it.