Installed programs not showing up in menus

Very frustrating 7.1 Kernel why is it that both gnome and KDE seem to display which programs they please rather than the programs I've installled. Say for example I install Star Office.... It dosnt show up! I install xroast... dosnt show up! I install games... guess what?? Virtually *NONE* of the really usefull *NEW* programs are available.... but *tons* of junk programs are!! So, I suppose its my responsibility to bring all these in and run them under the correct permissions and risk trashing my system!! I would think in a distro that's as far along as SuSE .. this *should* be done for you rather than having the risk of running programs under the wrong permissions why is this? rob