Just spent 2 days of my life trying to install an application on linux RH and Debian

My wife is doing her masters in Material engineering, she found a modeling tool that runs on here: https://www.ctcms.nist.gov/archives/software/wulffman/. So I made the obvious and DL Redhat Linux and started to install, I liked the setup process and I started with the first CD. I thought I could skip the last 2 discs which I found out that are needed almost at the end of install (Thank god for Save State in Virtual PC). The third disc was needed for only 4 mb....

Then I started to DL all the RPM (MSI like packages) and started to install, just to find out one of the dependencies didn't run on RedHat, the solution should have been simple, download the sources compile them on RH and somehow find out where to put the files. Couldn't find a way to compile them.

I wen to a econd solution and installed Debian, not really installed, I used Knoppix it's a CD that runs Debian without installing it, using RAM as a HD to the session. Then I found out that there aren't any RPM for Debian (it works fine for RH). I just gave up. If any linux guys are reading this: guys, you really need to make it simple. I admit I am not a linux expert and I don't hate linux in any way and I'm quite happy with the fact windows needs to compete with another OS but it needs to be simpler than that.