In GNU/Linux there are more than 1 app. which one can choose :-
1. In mail clients there is sylpheed, sylpheed claws, Evolution, Gnus, Novell Evolution, pine, mutt, mh-E, elm, slm, Pico & on & on. Now each client have their voracious supporter hence wouldn't say which is better or worse. (Been sighed in many a flame war on the same topic). So a big white flag before I venture into any of this.
Just a brief idea about some of the notable ones :-
1. pine & mutt :- these are text-based clients. The good point about them is speed. They're fast. Both have their own brownie points but Mutt has an in-built MTA. So if done properly a Mail server is up & running
2. sylpheed & sylpheed claws :- These are GUI-based clients. Sylpheed claws is a fork having many more features than the original.
3. Novell Evolution 2 :- The much hated, the much loved client. This is an enterprise grade one in all kinda thing. It has integrated connectivity with Novell Groupwise as well as MS Exchange server.
4. Gnus :- This one is an interesting one as its part of GNU Emacs/Xmacs. Not many people know that Emacs has its own IDE & programming language (lisp) so if u're the programming kind then you could do stuff to your liking. Its often argued that Gnus has the most no. of features than all the other mail/news readers (except perhaps Novell Evolution)
I could go on & on but let some things be found out by you. That's the joy with GNU/Linux systems.
A foot-note I would like to add however is the MH message handling system. It's unique in the sense that it's not 1 program but quite a bunch of programs loosely interacting with each other. Also they don't store the messages in a single file but each message would have its own file in a special directory. The beauty of this system is that some powerful filtering methods can be applied & in some senses in much like a mini-database system. There're enhancements to the project known as
MH-E
Browsers :- Here also one is spoiled. Right from FF which is available u have Konqueror, K-Melon, Galeon, Kazehakase, Skipstone, Salamander & on & on. Again u'll find people swearing by one or the other. So no prizes for guessing my favorite it's FF here. Although also like Epiphany as well as
Kazehakase even though it's just one guy who's developing the whole thing.
Games there's no dearth of Games on GNU/Linux . I would rather point u to the master list at
wikipedia which has links to all the other Gaming lists.
This is a tricky one. O.k. what I would recommend is first read the docs. There is a Suse user guide as well as Suse admin guide which will tell u quite a bit about what rpms are, what srpms are & so on & so forth. Instead of putting your efforts into learning commands put more into understanding concepts. Once the concepts are understood then commands & their logic is easily understood. Of course with the GUI & all for day-to-day purposes u shouldn't need to use it although the CLI is fast.
Secondly, see which is the nearest repositery & download all the security updates. Even a month in a GNU/Linux distro. is a long-time, any vulnerabilities & bug-fixes are fixed as they're open. Also install only what is needed. This will make the OS & the environment compact which is more secure as well as easier to handle in the long-term.
Hopefully 've answered the above to the full satisfaction
As always flames, tips welcome