In order to install some of the software, you may need to install other software that it requires to run. I'm not really sure of the histroy of repositories, but basically there are places where people can upload their newest version of their software, then users can download a command line program that will mangage all of the software that comes from the repositories. Fink and darwinports (also called macports) are exactly that. If you install fink, then you can go to the terminal and type in something like fink install vlc and fink will find the latest version of vlc, see what else needs to be installed to run it (dependencies), download them, then compile everything since they are all distributed as source, and tell you complete when it's done. It's a beautiful thing for those of us who get stuck just trying to download or unzip from the command prompt, not to mention compile. None of those things are actually that hard, but if you don't love it you're going to hate it.
But some of us are even scared of typing fink install vlc, so there are gui's that make nice little application windows that you can point and click to accomplish the same thing. Porticus works for darwinports, and Fink Commander for fink. For everything I've done, I didn't even need fink.
So if you are starting out, a good starting point would be to install darwinports, then download porticus. While you are at it, install the developer tools from you mac install cd. You will need some of the tools on there, and anyway xcode and quartz composer are good things to have. These are available from apples website as a free download if you can't find your install disc. If you are into video, quartz composer is an extremely useful tool to play with. And with a patch you can make your compositions multitouch and interactive. But if you are just starting out, come back to that, there is still a lot to do.
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