You can skip the tutorial quite easily by just grabbing the keycard in the first area for the door, breaking the boxes in front of the second door, walking past the signal station, and then fixing the transformer. However the game in 0.9 has changed a LOT and you're going to be very confused if you don't do the tutorial to get acquanted with the controls, the new signal pinging system, the server & transformer minigames, the way upgrades for servers & the station work, the tapedeck machine, etc.
Maybe hers is just good at the game, but hers hasn't had an issue with running out of fuses, battery power, or even struggling with the new minigames. It's all rather simple and is intended to make the gameplay more involved, which it accomplishes when hers plays. And the controls are like this to make them more simple for new players and because the item interaction programming got massively overhauled. It's easier on the hands and more intuitive, with the option of toggling between what press & holding e do.