Hello and welcome!
First things first, you will see some people hear posting random, potentially troll-like comments that detract from the original topic.
Setting that aside, Windows 8 can be a bit tricky to learn at first, one must need an open mind to learn it. You obviously are willing to learn it, so that's good!
The main thing you need to know is how to pin things to the Start Screen yourself. This is simple. When you're on the Desktop, within File Explorer, you can go and right click on Computer, a hard drive, folder, Library, Control Panel subcategory, or a program shortcut; and then hit Pin to Start from the context menu. This will make new tiles appear on Start, which will reduce your need for Start8. You can simply click and drag the tiles around to where ever you please.
Second, while on the Start Screen, you can right click anywhere and hit All apps on the bottom command bar. From there, you can scroll over and right click on pretty much any program or app, and hit Pin to Start or Pin to taskbar from the command bar. This is your basic Start Screen usage.
Next, the new metro apps. This is the trickier part.
When you launch an app, it'll go full screen. You can open another app, then then move the mouse pointer to the top left corner, click and then drag to snap it. To change app settings, move the mouse pointer to the top or bottom right corners, and move towards the middle side of the screen. This opens the Charms bar, which is the primary way to interact with the apps, such as searching (both from your PC to apps to the internet) or sharing (email, social networks, or other apps that share), using other devices (if you're in Reader and want to print off a pdf file, this is used; or switching to a secondary display), as well as settings (app settings, a few system settings and power options). Click on the Settings charm, and you can change app settings right there. Or if you want to search within the app, you can just literally start typing right away. To close the app, move the mouse pointer to the top of the screen, click when you see a little hand, then drag it down. It's pretty fun!
You will also need to right click often within the apps. For example, in the News app, you can right click to switch to different news sources or videos. Or in the Music app, you right click to hit play. Or you can just use your keyboard's multimedia controls.
This is mostly the basics of it all, hopefully you can uninstall Start8 soon and Start using Windows 8!