I read: [...]
read docs as literature, I figured it was no problem. 2 days later I was
[...traumatic experiences snipped...]
WOW, it's sad to hear stories like that over and over again, and I'm really impressed by the fact that you're still giving debian (or free sw in general a go).
A few tips for people that want to move over to antarctica though:
find someone experienced who's willing to lend you a hand in the beginning (ideally this is someone from your school, neighborhood but if no one's available check out irc and mailing lists a lot of people in the linux community tend to be extremely helpful and geeky enough to have amazing response times)
be prepared for a steep learning curve, hey this is the literate user department, and no os is transparent to the blind, you will run into trouble (just like with any other complex piece of tech) when trying unusual things, and after you fixed a couple of major fsck ups you'll be glad you did, they happen less often once you get the hang of it, and you'll find it much easier to fix minor nuisances. (I don't dare to say never, I consider myself a little experienced with free unices and sometimes really really bad things can happen to you, but that's hardly exclusive to free sw, at least I have less esoteric theories about what is going wrong than the amusing read some mac-'tech' forums expose[0])
learn to program/script a little at first and try to put it to use and see how lots of tedious tasks can be made very easy by simply changing a few lines in some readily available script/program, watch yourself becoming better at it.
figure out the package management system of your distribution (if applicable), become familiar with the GNU build system and start making your own (packages not management system that is)
start talking in tongues, use more acronyms than actual words, patch your kernel on a regular basis and feel the cool breeze.
cheers,
OTx
[0] please this is not intended to qualify mac users as less technology savy, but I recently was asked to solve a mac problem that didn't exist in the first place when I tried, and a little bit (or rather a lot) of searching the web brought me to places were people actually suggested to change flats because of an illegal instruction error being triggered by the gerbage men truck or whatever ...