No, you don't need any special editor. In fact, I wouldn't recommend using one, as all the special editors are really just a crutch. It's much better to learn how to program the underlying LaTeX itself, rather than rely on some high-level tool to do it for you. (just my opinion here)

There are an absolute glut of LaTeX tutorials out there to get you started. Here's one:

http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/index.html

But there are many, many others. Some are particularly good for people in certain specialties. For instance, here's an excellent LaTeX resource for logicians:

http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/teaching_staff/Smith/logicmatters/...

Ha. I remember Smith being ridiculously adamant about everybody using LaTeX for their essays and logic stuff...

You can use a wysiwyg-ish editor like LyX or TeXmacs, but eventually, you'll likely want formatting it doesn't make trivial, particularly for something like a resume.

If you're comfortable with Vim or Emacs, both of them have good LaTeX support. The AucTeX package for Emacs is particularly excellent (it needs to be installed separately, but Debian packages it).

There are also editors best described as "LaTeX IDEs". They provide a syntax-highlighting editor and have particular support for running the LaTeX processing toolchain, parsing error messages and warnings (a nontrivial proposition), and sometimes provide support for generating LaTeX code snippets like table layouts. One such package is Texmaker, a Qt-based IDE with a look-and-feel somewhat like Qt Creator.

gedit has a LaTeX plugin which is what I use.

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=gedit-latex-plugi...