Git is a version control system that allows cloning repositories, pulling changes, branching, adding files, committing changes with comments, merging branches without fast-forwarding, resolving conflicts during merging, and applying patches from emails. Key commands include git clone, git pull, git checkout -b, git add, git commit, git merge --no-ff, git push, git format-patch, and git am. Branches can be created, changes committed, merged back to master with conflicts resolved, and patches applied from emails.