I'm hardly what I would consider a "guru" and don't have trouble like what you describe, nor have I ever done so. I certainly don't consider myself to be any kind of "genius" for that matter, either. I suspect you're trying to transport your Windows skills and this is likely to be ... problematic.

For your BOINC manager issue, make sure you link to the run_manager script, not the binary itself. Both the client and the manager take the directory they are run from as part of their environment conditions, so the manager won't be looking for the client in the right place but in the starting directory and it will fail.