TIL that I can drag a download link to my KDE desktop and it will automatically save the file to that location.

7zip doesn't have a builtin gui on Linux. Your file manager's "compress" and "extract" functions should be able to utilize it as needed. Only power users need all the bits and dials beyond that, and they can use the terminal to harness all the power of the 7z command.

KDE’s Discover pretty much does what you want in terms of being an all-in-one GUI package manager. If you're comfortable with the terminal, topgrade can upgrade pretty much everything and offers great flexibility is terms of configuration.

Also, a good rule of thumb is that, if you want GUI programs that show up in “start menu”, search specifically for GUI programs. In this case, that would be something like Peazip. In KDE, the file manager Dolphin can extract stuff for you using Ark, which is installed by default.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect CLI programs to appear in the “start menu” because they are usually intended to be launched from the terminal.

I have found that: it’s easier if you stick to one (major) distro such as Debian or its derivatives, and try to stick to that distro’s package system (in this case, apt). Yes there is a learning curve. But once you learn it, you find that Linux gets easier to use. But more importantly, it gets more POWERFUL to use. I agree with your assessment that Linux is not beginner friendly but it is USER friendly in that it empowers the user. But yes you do have to put in a little work first.

installing and managing programs on Linux is a NIGHTMARE

I feel you, but it's a damned sight better than it used to be. If you're ever in a headspace for some masochism, try installing something from source. It can either be smooth sailing or one of the most torturous experiences ever. Just do yourself a favor and do it in a VM or on a throw away system. Software installed that way is often HARD to remove cleanly.

I just wish there was an all in one program manager.

There is. At least for flatpaks and apt repositories, though I would imagine that it would work just fine with rpm repositories or whatever Redhat based distros are using nowadays. YUM I think? Never been big on team Redhat.

In KDE the program is called Discover. Gnome, i think, is Software Center, though that may just be for Ubuntu derivatives. Been a while. I'll be honest, I don't use them much. Early versions (20ish years ago) were dog slow, and as a result CTL + ALT + t followed by sudo apt get and flatpak install are burned into my fingers.

I don’t know what linux’s equivilant of “C/Windows/Program Filesx86/”

Exactly where things get installed depends on your distro as well as who built the actual package that was installed. Linux has a couple of standard directories that things are usually installed at. If you actually need to find the 7zip binary, try in /bin, /usr/bin, or /usr/local/bin but wherever it is, it should already be in your path. Here's a decent explanation of *nix's directory structure: https://linuxhandbook.com/linux-directory-structure/ .

It's generally applicable to Unix, Linux, WSL, and MacOS. Feel free to open a terminal and go have a poke around. If you stick to the commands cd, less and sudo less you won't be able to break anything, but will be able look at what's there. cd is the same as in Windows. less let's you read a file a page at a time, without editing it. sudo just let's you read the files that are owned by the root user, or another user.

You can usually read more about these commands using the man <program> command. If your distro hasn't included man pages, it works in every web search engine I've tried over the years as well. Usually it's the first result.

<command> --help will generally give you a brief crash course on how to use a command. Very helpful, but also usually very terse.

I want to install 7zip. I go online, find the terminal command, I install it…and terminal tells me it’s already installed on the latest version.
It’s not in my start menu.

According to its man page you would call it on the terminal using 7z. So to extract an archive, the command should be something like 7z e /path/to/archive. As a heads up, there is a warning not to use 7zip to create backups on linux.

I seem to recall that there were also applications called zip and unzip that do much the same thing but were limited to just .zip files. May already be in your distro. And found a nice refresher on them here: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/linux-unix/zip-command-in-linux-with-examples/

If you were looking to create zip files to share, there should be a gui application included in your distro that should be able to create and extract zip files. For me its Ark, but for Gnome it might be called Archive Manager or some such. If your application menu is sorted by application type, try looking in the System or Utilities sections.

Proof reading this has given me a horrid thought. "Oh God! I'm a GREY BEARD!"

I want all my programs all in one place, and all in the start menu, listed alphabetically. I want a center where I can push a button to update them, or mod them, or uninstall them, or even open them (if for some reason the start menu wasn't working for some reason). I want it all in one centralized manager app. Call it whatever the fuck you want. But it should handle wine exe installs, flatpaks, sudo apt-get install, AppImages, and.....sigh, yes, even snaps. If you can install it, this manager should handle it, including being able to click a checkbox that says "add to start menu". You can uncheck it if for some reason you DON'T want a program on your start menu, but it should give you the option.

Should it also handle RPM, pkgtool, pkgsrc, nixpkg, Portage, Homebrew, PyPI, NPM, CPAM, CLTN, CTAN, .jar, and software installed from source via ./configure; make; make install?

On the other hand, instead of putting all the responsibility on the GNOME shell devs (and the devs of every other application launcher) to support every software packaging format under the sun, maybe it would be better to put the responsibility on the people packaging each application to conform to the Freedesktop.org desktop entry specification.

I'm not saying your complaint isn't valid, BTW. Linux's lack of a central authority to dictate how things should work does inherently cause some problems that we basically just have to suck up and accept in the name of freedom.

But the point I'm trying to make is that, while Linux may not do something the way you would expect coming from Windows, that doesn't mean it doesn't [try to] solve the problem in a different way. The more you can let go of your Windows-familiarity-based "intuition" of how things should work, the better off you'll be.

(Speaking of which: one reason you can't find the equivalent of "Program Files" is that the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard collates programs' files by type—executables go in bin, configuration files go in etc, and so on—instead of collating per application with all of its files together in a single directory. This has advantages and disadvantages that you may or may not care about, but one design isn't necessarily clearly superior to the other in all cases.)

I struggled with your exact same problem when I moved to Linux. For the record, the reason why there isn't a Program Files x86 is because the way that Linux stores programs is different from the way that Windows stores programs. Windows sorts its system files by programs, so that the configuration, launcher, and software files are all together. Linux sorts by file type, so that the configuration files of all programs are together, the launchers of all programs are together, etc.

What I've come to learn is, don't bother trying to find your application in the folder. The best way to install things is through Discover (or whatever GUI software manager you're using). If the program you want isn't there, it's basically a crapshoot whether installing from the internet will work or not

If only there was a Linux terminal command to locate the path of a file...