Hang out at avrfreaks.net, there's a lot more AVR, and avr-gcc specific stuff over there.
There's a port of the gcc C compiler (usually referred to as "avr-gcc") that works with the AVR line of chips, and apparently the AVR studio has some hooks for it. I haven't used AVR studio in any depth since the 3.5 days, so I have no idea how to set it up though.
GCC is inherently a command-line program, and coming from a unix background, I usually work at the prompt.