New(ish) to Mac and the Forums

My very first computer was an Apple ][ and then because of work and everyone else I knew, I went to a PC and have been there until now. Now I have "inherited" my daughter's MacBook because we got her a Pro for college. I want to clean it and reconfigure it for me instead of the middle-school kid who used to own it, but I feel pretty clueless as to how to go about it.

I'm used to getting into the bones of computers using a command-line interface; I've got an Ubuntu VM running on my PC at home.

I don't know why, but I feel intimidated by this Mac for some reason.

we probably DON'T Have the original boot disk for this machine. If there is some way to make a bootable USB, I could use that.

I appreciate any help and advice.... thanks!

Is this the white plastic Macbook? Since it's working click on the Apple in the Top Left corner and on about this Mac. What all does it say there for CPU. RAM and OSX version?

If this is a MacBook. To do what you want to do...the best first step in my opinion would be to purchase an OS 10.6 Snow Leopard install disk:

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.)

- Nick