Welcome to SRP!
Make you sure you go to the Library and look over the beginners info and feel free to get lost in all of the other material for hours on end if you like.

Where did you get your razor from? And what brand of razor is it?
From that we can tell you whether it needs to be honed or not before your shave with it.
If it needs to be honed, I suggest sending it out to be professionally honed (see the member's services in the classified area). Honing a razor isn't for the inexperienced.

The linen side of the strop isn't necessary, but most people prefer it to clean the blade and warm it up before stropping on leather and getting it dirty.
Stropping isn't as easy as it looks. Start practicing now with a butter knife on your pants leg. The quickest way to mess up your blade is with a bad stropping.

How long will the razor stay sharp? Well that depends on your beard, your shaving technique, your stropping technique, and the razor. To give you a rough idea though, when I started I had to use a pasted strop twice the first week and a 12k finisher at the end of the week. It got better, and after 2 months I was able to only have to hit the 12k once a month. I'm around 4 months in, I haven't had to use the finisher or pasted strop for about a month. For the experienced, they can go all year without honing, some longer.

You can get a quality razor from the Classifieds here. Usually there are a couple under $50. Or a lot of people start with whippeddog.com. I'm sure some other people will have more recommendations.

Lastly, if you have questions that you can't find the answers to using the Advanced Search in the upper right hand corner, then feel free to ask. This forum is full of some of the nicest, most helpful gentlemen and ladies that I've ever come across.