[plug] Newbys guide

[J Michael Gilks]

>
>  Downloading stuff seems to be a little bit of a problem as the
> instructions often anticipate reasonable skills, IMHO.
>  That brings me to this question: Is there some nice eye-candy(GUI)
> tool which would take care of this just like XCD Roast or k3b will
> simplify burning CDs or DVDs?
>
Every major distro I have ever tried had some form of default GUI for 
installing programs.
Mandrake		Control Centre		Software Management
SUSE		YAST
Debian		Aptitude

The default setup varies, but at least you will be able to install any program 
on the installation media.
Setting up sources for updates and newer versions of programs does vary, but 
there are always very simple instructions to set up a default set of sources. 
To use different sources may take a bit of research, depending on distro, but 
is generally in the distros own FAQs and HOWTO sections of their website.

Hope I have got the question right, this is about GUI installers for software.
Whatever distro you have, look in the menu structure, usually 
System - Configuration - Packaging
or something of that ilk.

Hope this helps.

Love
Mike.