How can I start pagenumbers, where the first section occurs in LaTex?

You can also reset page number counter:

\setcounter{page}{1}

However, with this technique you get wrong page numbers in Acrobat in the top left page numbers field:

\maketitle: 1
\tableofcontents: 2
\setcounter{page}{1}
\section{Introduction}: 1
...

I use

\pagenumbering{roman}

for everything in the frontmatter and then switch over to

\pagenumbering{arabic}

for the actual content. With pdftex, the page numbers come out right in the PDF file.

To suppress the page number on the first page, add \thispagestyle{empty} after the \maketitle command.

The second page of the document will then be numbered "2". If you want this page to be numbered "1", you can add \pagenumbering{arabic} after the \clearpage command, and this will reset the page number.

Here's a complete minimal example:

\documentclass[notitlepage]{article}

\title{My Report}
\author{My Name}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\thispagestyle{empty}

\begin{abstract}
\ldots
\end{abstract}

\clearpage
\pagenumbering{arabic} 

\section{First Section}
\ldots

\end{document}