
After setting up the .gitignore file, in Linux, the following will create your repository...
sudo git init
sudo git add .
sudo git commit -m 'initial commit'

Sidenote: when I switched from Mercurial to Git (Mercurial was fine for me... just wanted to get my feet wet with Git), my idea was to use GitHub. However, being in a startup, with a small team, I decided to keep some Euros in my bank account and use Bitbucket, which is free for up to 5 users. I used Bitbucket with Mercurial, so I was already familiar with it, and I'm very happy to stay there.
Next, since I develop on Windows (10), I needed to get the code locally. To do that, I use SourceTree, which makes cloning the repository on Windows a no-brainer.