I'm a .NET developer and I've used TFS (team foundation server) as my source control software many times. Good features of TFS are:

1. Good integration with Visual Studio (so I do almost everything visually; no console commands)
2. Easy check-out, check-in process
3. Easy merging and conflict resolution
4. Easy automated builds
5. Branching

Now, I want to use Git as the backbone, repository, and source control of my open source projects. My projects are in C#, JavaScript, or PHP language with MySQL, or SQL Server databases as the storage mechanism.

I just used github.com's help for this purpose and I created a profile there, and downloaded a GUI for Git. Up to this part was so easy.

But I'm almost stuck at going along any further. I just want to do some simple (really simple) operations, including:

1. Creating a project on Git and mapping it to a folder on my laptop
2. Checking out/checking in files and folders
3. Resolving conflicts

That's all I need to do now. But it seems that the GUI is not that user friendly. I expect the GUI to have a Connect To... or something like that, and then I expect a list of projects to be shown, and when I choose one, I expect to see the list of files and folders of that project, just like exploring your TFS project in Visual Studio. Then I want to be able to right click a file and select check-in... or check-out and stuff like that.

Do I expect much? What should I do to easily use Git just like TFS? What am I missing here?