I am surprised that mint dooes not ship the b43 drivers by default it that distro does not appear to be friendly for offline use. But I did find a tutorial for you to try at http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/692

Unfortunately this site does not have many kernel developers. I highly recommend joining the mailing list at http://kernelnewbies.org/ . They have many knowledgeable members who can help point you in the right direction.

wow that is a rant that is hard to follow. I am trying my best so please correct me if I missed a question.

It sounds like you want installed applications to leave a desktop icon to run them, that is a windows behavior that generally annoys most people so it is not a default action by any window manger. The windows icon are just shortcuts an similarly you can make shortcuts to apps or custom .desktop files to launch the apps with custom options. If you can tell me which window manager or Linux variant you are using then we can attempt to guide you.

As for clicking on a file and choosing install, the reason it is not working it because you need to be the root or admin user to install software and most linux variants block logging in as the root user. You might want to check the right clikc options to see if an open with option exists and based upon your chosen variant there may be an option like open with yun or open with synaptic package manager.

I recommend against fuduntu because it is being killed off by the developers per the post at http://www.fuduntu.org/blog/2013/04/15/fuduntu-team-meeting-held-on-april-14-2013/ .

It sounds like the manual requires a windows based virtual machine, not that it is a vmware virtual machine. If you cannot get it to work in dosbox or wine then you have no choice but to extract it in a windows machine or windows virtual machine.

Since that app does not have an ubuntu package you will need to compile the application and install it yourself.

Generally you do the following:
1. Download the source file into a new directory
2. type "sudo su -" to enter the system as root, which is needed to install a new application.
3. when inthe source directory type "./configure" to configure the build parameters. You cna use "./configure --help" to get a list of all options that can be used with that app.
4. Type "make" to start the compile process.
5. Type "make install" to install the application on the system.

Please be aware that the application will not reflect in the ubuntu software center or any other package management tools. If you wish for it to show as an ubuntu package you will need to build a custom package which is covered in the article at 1. Read the information on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CompilingEasyHowTo

There are alternatives such as kget or others listed at http://alternativeto.net/software/kget/?platform=linux. My favorite of that software type is flashget for windows.

With your complaints about things not working like windows it may be best for you to run windoss, with all tasks you use the right tool for the job and in some cases it may be windows or apple.

With enough patience you can get anything to ask as you wish, which is what makes linux compelling to many people but you need to know what specifically you want before you can find the right utilities.

Also, the reason why most linux help on the internet referes to the command line is because it is far faster and more accurate to type a command than instruct someone through several mouse actions. Just because we refer to the command line often does not mean that it is the only way to accomplish a task.

I am with you, each person should use the best tool for the job and in some cases that will be proprietary software. I do not think locking down software is necessarily bad, but it does severely limit it's evolutionary future and limit the users' capability to diagnose and correct issues.

MY observation of the FOSS loyals is that they are against proprietary software because it restricts knowledge (the source code) from the world and limits the potential for the functionality to evolve.

Any distribution would fulfill your needs. If you were a redhat user then I recommend trying fedora which is the community version of redhat. After installation you can use yum (the package manager) to install everything that you need.

Welcome to the forum, I look forward to your question and ideas.