actually (keeping it going), we veered off from "easy app installs". every os be this distro or that distro do have different ways of installing apps. but, they stay pretty close such as fedora has .rpm, debian has apt-get and pkg, etc....some applications install strange mainly because it is the only way to get it to run on most to all linx distros out there (imho). so thay have to be packaged this way or that way in order to install and work. also, practice makes perfect. the more you do it the better and easier it will be next time. keep in mind this is my pov on why some are easy and some are hard installs. i trust the gurus to please correct me if i'm wrong on something here.

dogged28 does have a great point here guys. As matter of fact, I had a question about straiting out an issue with trutype fonts, I posted it on the forums here at lq and with in the day i received a ver short and concise answer with directions which i followed and in as little time as I new it I had all the fonts my heart could possibly desire.

The moral of this story is that communities such as lq have made my life in the gnu arena one remarkably easier than going it on my own (to my fathers dismay @ my life choice).

In response to the "Windows is just so easy and all one way, and Linux has a million different ways to install things" comment:

You have to understand that Linux is a really broad term. Yes, they all share common blood, so to speak, but Linux is like any population. You start out with a common ancestor and, as time passes, different families are born and branch off. Some of the families die out, others expand out even further. It's the way of life, and Linux is, at least in this sense, a living thing.

Populations grow apart over time. It's just how it is. They develop different languages and different ways of doing things. There are how many different languages in the world? Alot, to say the least. Some of them are similar, some are completely different. Because you are used to English, you think that it is a really simple and natural way of communicating. If, suddenly you are introduced to the whole, say, Indo-European language family, yes there are many different ways of doing things. But each of them is pretty well defined and fleshed out when you get down to it.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is, yes there are different ways of installing applications and running you computer, find a distro that does it the way you like it, and stick with it. Yes, learning other distros will make you are smarter person, just like learning other languages will, but it isn't necessary. Find out what works for you, and stick with it.

Install yum.

Then install yumex.

Be happy.

If your distro uses apt-get, then install synaptic.

Be happy.

Make sure you have all the extra repositories for multimedia for your distro.

I've been playing with Ubuntu 10.04 recently and the Software Center makes installing applications trivially simple! Even Synaptic is hardly exactly bewildering to use.

I would imagine every mainstream distro (Fedora, OpenSuSE etc.) uses something very similar rather than relying on command line apt-get or rpm.

I know the following link appears in some post every few days but you might wanna read this: http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Most mainstream distros have a GUI app to install extra SW. You can also (optionally) do this from the cmd line if you so wish. In either case you'll need the root login passwd.
As above, try a few distros out eg via LiveCD options, then pick one and learn it well.

Yeah... Ubuntu has the Ubuntu Software Center. Search for the name/type of application you want. View the results and click install. Maybe what you need is a easier to use version of Linux... try Ubuntu 10.10... and then google "10 things to do after installing ubuntu 10.10" and follow the omg*.co.uk directions to making ubuntu even better and easier to use.

Fedora has kpackagekit as a default installer.

You can add yumex with kpackagekit. The kpackagekit is very simple to use, almost identical to microsoft updates, but slow. Yumex is a little bit more elaborate and a lot more powerful. Yum is the command line behind yumex.

SuSE uses YaST as its software installer. YaST is fairly easy to use but tends to be "brittle" if you constantly install and remove stuff for no reason in high volume.

Synaptic is the gui for apt-get & the level of difficulty is about the same as yumex, maybe slightly easier. Again, I could teach any intelligent 8 year old how to use any of these installers.

Synaptic is used by Mepis, which is an excellent friendly flavor of Linux.

The hardest part to linux is getting past the intimmedation stage. Asking for help, knowing how to ask the question and doing a little research on your own.

BTW. I have a question................lol

Look at the date on the original post.