[cglouch]

One resource I've found pretty useful for understanding git is http://think-like-a-git.net/ (also linked at the end of the article). It basically describes git in terms of a directed acyclic graph, where branches/tags give you starting points into the underlying DAG, and the various commands allow you to perform manipulations on it. Once I started thinking about it this way, it made a lot more sense.

That said, the command line UI really is infuriating - checkout means 3 different things depending on what the argument is, it's never clear to me whether I should be using "origin master" or "origin/master," etc. I'm also not entirely sold on the usefulness of the index, but perhaps that's cause I'm still new to using git.