packages

I don't know if this is the right place in the forum this question. it seems obvious to me that most alpine users are level 200 in computer karate.
forgive my utter lack of knowledge of anything?

I was using the apk add command in the terminal to install/download packages/tar balls of software that I hope to be able to run someday. It seems as if some of them installed and subsequently a launcher popped up for them on the application menu while others just seem to have downloaded large tarballs that need to be compiled, configured, built, and installed before they would be usable. at least this is my impression, I couldn't find any desktop launchers for many of the programs I "apk add"ed.

is there a really simple way to configure, compile and build all these things. they all seem to have congregated in the root/usr/share directory. just sitting there....I have no idea what to do with them.....

should I bother with this or just try to get a linux-grsec kernel running in manjaro or archbang? or maybe just use sabayon since they have recently been hardening their kernels with gentoo patches? I have no idea if sabayon has incorporated grsecurity and pax though and I have no idea how to go about that either. I've been trying to get one of these "user-friendly" arch and gentoo derived distributions to run on a linux-grsec kernel like alpine does but haven't been able to yet although I think I've come fairly close to doing it but I have no real assurances that I did it right with alpine I know that a grsecurity/pax kernel is running in the most optimal manner. it's just that I can't the two other software programs I need (virtual box and/or wine) running.

if anyone can spare the time any help would be appreciated.