Well, after spending one week trying out many different distros including Mepis, ubuntu, mandrake, suse and linspire, I have finally settled on my prefered linux system.
This is my first time using linux, however, I've picked up a few things from using the other distros.
I'm currently using fedora core 3, with the gnome gui. Its great nothing has gone wrong so far.
However, I have a lot of questions, though most have been answered previously in this forum, so I've had a good look before asking these questions, I know how annoying it is when people ask the same thing over and over again rather than using the search button.
So here we go :

1. Is it possible to use konqueror as the default file viewer in Gnome? I don't mind the gnome file viewer, but I took quite a shining to konqueror. Obviously, I'll still use firefox as my web browser though.
2. I know this sounds a bit vain, but bare with me. Clicking on the little 'red hat' brings up a list of applications currently installed. I was just wondering if its possible to make this look nice, I'm a sucker for aesthetics. Over the past week I have been using KDE as my gui, however, I have now switched to Gnome and would like to carry on using it. There's just something about it, it feels simple, yet robust.
3. In KDE there was a control centre where the user could go into it, and change many of the aspects of the GUI, such as the themes, collours, icons, text, desktop backgrounds, peripherals, etc etc, is there anything like this with Gnome?

I don't have much of an answer but I'll give you what I've got:

1 (Konqueror in GNOME): I'm sure it's possible, but as I don't use GNOME I never figured out how to change it.

2 (Application Menu modification): I figured this out but I can't remember. I'll look again and hopefully have a reply later tonight.

3 (Control Center): GNOME's "control center" is more like Window's Control Panel. It should be the Control Center listed in the Application Menu (it was in FC1 anyway).

--RF

I'm an idiot. Ignore most of what I wrote.

I couldn't find something to modify the Application Menu (although I'm sure there's some way to do it).

I found out how to change some apps, but not the file viewer (look for a MIME editor or put a link on your desktop).

There is no GNOME Control Center in FC3. In FC1 it was pretty much what you found in the Preferences menu anyway.

Sorry I'm no/little help

--RF

1. Before giving up on Nautilus, (the default file viewer) try this:
click on "Applications" then "System Tools" then "Configuation Editor"
Then open "Apps" then "Nautilus" then "Preferences" now enable (check) "always_use_browser"

See if you don't like Nautilus better now. Since Gnome 2.4 I think, they have had the "Spatial" mode of Nautilus as default. See if you don't like Nautilus better in the browser mode, makes it look more like Konquerer.

2. Don't know.

3 Check in "Applications" then "Preferences" and there are "Theme" and "Menus & Toolbars". You can also do a lot of Gnome customizations by right clicking on either the top or bottom tool bar.

Pudge

Yeah, there is, but it's not as easy to find. I just looked in /usr/bin last night and found gnome-control-center

You can't change the defualt file viewer in gnome-control-center but you could just replace all your shortcuts with Konqueror shortcuts.