As a cryptocurrency enthusiast, I discovered Ethereum in the past couple of weeks and decided to give it a shot. Although it's not necessarily ready for general public consumption, it is still a fascinating technology for enthusiasts to try out.
I downloaded the Mist client and waited about 3 days for the blocks to sync. It turns out I was only at block 2.4 million out of 3.7 million at the time, so the first lesson is: do not try this at home unless you are a very patient individual.
If you want to get synchronised with the blockchain relatively very quickly, you will need to use the fast sync option. Note that this requires some familiarity with the command-line. Using this process took my notebook with a SSD about 15 hours to complete. I read that it takes longer on a HDD, but I haven't been able to verify that.
Before we get into this, why Ethereum? Well, the bitcoin transaction fees have increased exponentially, so it no longer makes economic sense to make transfers using bitcoin. Additionally, the bitcoin blocks being found are almost always full, so it may take a while for your transaction to get processed unless you go way beyond the regular fees. Also, you get faster confirmation times with Ethereum (within a minute or less).
Download the latest version of Mist from https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases if you don't have it installed already.
We'll cover about how to run this for Windows, macOS and Ubuntu. First things first, copy your main account address from the wallet and save it somewhere. Also, make a backup of your account if you already have funds in it just to be on the safe side.
On Windows, (starting from Windows 7 at least), open the Command Prompt and navigate to the geth binary folder. Replace "shockr" in the commands below with your Windows username.
Run the following commands.
C:\Users\shockr>cd C:\Users\shockr\AppData\Roaming\Mist\binaries\Geth\unpacked
C:\Users\shockr\AppData\Roaming\Mist\binaries\Geth\unpacked>geth removedb
Press y, and then Enter to confirm, then
C:\Users\shockr\AppData\Roaming\Mist\binaries\Geth\unpacked>geth --fast --cache 1024 --etherbase 0x2e2D6942ab1d2a69b665b1856c74BaF17c59159a --datadir "<path/to/your/data/dir>"
Replace the address in the command with your Ethereum account address. The datadir flag is optional and you only need to specify it if you set a different directory for storing the Ethereum chaindata when installing Mist.
If you've got a lot more memory available, you can increase the size for the cache flag. 1024 indicates that geth should use 1GB of memory for caching.
For macOS, you need to install homebrew and the ethereum command line tools.
Open the Terminal and run the following commands:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew tap ethereum/ethereum
brew install ethereum
Then you can run the geth sync commands. Again, make sure to backup beforehand if you have funds in your account.
geth removedb
geth --fast --cache 1024 --etherbase 0x2e2D6942ab1d2a69b665b1856c74BaF17c59159a
Again, don't forget to change the address to your account address.
The steps are fairly straightforward for Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ethereum
geth removedb
geth --fast --cache 1024 --etherbase 0x2e2D6942ab1d2a69b665b1856c74BaF17c59159a
If you'd like to check sync progress, open a new terminal window, and then run:
geth attach
> eth.syncing
This will show you the currentBlock for synchronisation, and the highestBlock in the blockchain.
Once fast sync is completed, you should see the following line in the geth output:
fast sync complete, auto disabling
Close the terminal instance and then launch your wallet. Note that you have to keep your wallet running consistently to keep it synchronised with the blockchain, otherwise you may fall behind by a huge amount of blocks, and synchronisation would take some time to complete.
Indeed. Like I stated earlier, Ethereum is not ready for general public consumption. If you want to get up and running much faster, there are alternatives to using the official wallet which include Parity built by the Ethcore team, or MyEtherWallet. You could also try Jaxx, which looks nice, but my experience with it has been less than stellar due to the fact that transactions simply just don't go through at random hours of the day.
You can buy or mine Ether. I wouldn't recommend looking for faucets, because practically all of them are ad-ridden sites that will make your eyes bleed.
I had some litecoin stashed away which I converted to Ether using shapeshift.io. shapeshift supports quite a number of cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, dash and a lot more. You could also purchase Ether from exchanges like coinbase (if you're based in the US) or kraken (if you're based in Europe). I'm sure there are a lot more which you can find with a simple Google search.
Please note that I am not in any way affiliated with any of the aforementioned services, so makes sure to do your research before sending your coins or money to any of the exchanges.
GPU mining is another viable option. I'm planning to build a simple mining rig using NVIDIA GTX 1060s, since AMD GPUs are pretty much either too expensive or out of stock at this point due to the high demand. I also plan to write about this on Steem, so be sure to follow me 
You've begun your journey with Ethereum. This is a basic guide, so we didn't cover concepts like smart contracts or ICOs, but you should be able to find out more on the ethereum project site.
If you liked this guide or found it helpful, a donation to 0x2e2D6942ab1d2a69b665b1856c74BaF17c59159a would be appreciated.
Cheers and good luck!