Instalation problems...

[yanom]

I have installed 3 things lately: 2 from the Synaptic Package Manager and one from a shell script I downloaded off of the internet. The packages were: The games Craft and Freecraft from the package manager, and the Netbeans C++ IDE from the shell script. None of these programs appear in any of the submenus in the applications menu on my GNOME, even in the "Debian" submenu folders.

[John A]

Some software doesn't get added to the Gnome menu even after it's been installed via the dpkg package management system (which is what apt-get and Synaptic are based on).

Try looking at the documentation on the websites of the software to see if they include any instructions on how to start the program, if they don't open a Terminal from the Gnome menu, then try running the names of the software, all in one word, and probably undercase. E.g. freecraft or netbeans.

If that doesn't work, search for it at the Terminal. Something like:

su
<enter password>
updatedb

and then

locate -i "program name"

Then type the full path of the program in at the prompt once you've located it.