Pagefan
Dries: i do prefer using the teminal these days because houdini does print out messages that could be usefull debugging scripts etc. etc.
You're right, you should be able to redirect those. For mantra output, I render the log to a file and read it with logviewer. I can nicely see what's going on for renders. Lacking other info though… If anyone knows how to redirect everything, I would like to hear about it.
Pagefan
In Suse you can add your own applications via the menumaker in the configuration manager. It's all gui based so no need to worry about where to put icons and scripts etc.
That's the same in Ubuntu with Alacarte. But that program puts everything in $HOME/.local for you. (Just like in Suse, me thinks.) I like to install .dekstop files in /usr/local/share/applications. That directory is on a share and so everyone that uses those programs, have the icon and everything installed. Install once, use everywhere. Alacarte should mature into a tool that let's you decide System Wide or User Wide.
For your interest, the order defined by
freedesktop.org is: /usr/share;/usr/local/share;$HOME/.local
/usr/share is for software included with your distro, /usr/local/share is for non-distro software. So globally install non-distro software would bring you to /usr/local/share
I have to admit it took me a while to figure this out. But as said before, there is a guideline that pins all this. Distro's should take care just a little bit more. Most of them are only off by a few minor things. I got the feeling they are finally moving in the right direction.