Getting frustrated with Ubuntu....

[hometoast]

while i can understand your frustration in not understanding what all
happened during your instatll, that is actually part of ubuntu.  If you
really wanted to poke around and make incremental changes and install 1
package at a time, I might suggest (ack) gentoo.
to answer a couple of your questions:
1. downloading from various sources. I tend to download everything into my
$HOME directory and then under downloads.
2. gnome w/o the "other stuff" generally no.  Just like the base ubuntu
system (default out of box) it installs gnome and the suite of apps a tools;
this is generally desireable as most dont want to have to manually install
their browser.
3. refresh rate: not an easy solution that I know of, but if you want to
tinker, this is the place! here's a useful link:
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/Screen_refresh_rate_t33565.html
4. kernel compiles:  Unless you need to compile in a module for a specific
reason, there isn't much need to do this.  but it can be quite educational.
Just make sure you've got your old kernel and module tree and the old
setting in grub.conf.  This is taken care of for you if you've read the same
howto's as I have.
5. usenet: evolution does a decent job of usenet; i can't think of any
though, that have the same interface style as agent.  If I find something
I'll be sure to add it here though. But this link is also a good resource
for app finding: http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html
6. via drivers: those are taken care of during the install.

hope that helps!
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