Basic keystrokes/mouse movements:

g: Grabber, also known as Translation

r: Rotation. Hold down ctrl to rotate by 5 degrees each

s: Scale/Size (and Flip, but that's advanced stuff)

MiddleMouse+ctrl: zoom in or out (up is in, down is out)

MiddleMouse+shift: pan around

MiddleMouse: “Trackball style rotation”—rotate your view

f1/f2: Load/Save

f12: Render

f11: toggle the display of the render window

ctrl-x: reset to defaults (this loads $HOME/.B.blend)

ctrl-u: save user defaults to $HOME/.B.blend, which Blender reads at startup or when you use ctrl-x

tab: edit mode toggle, for almost any place