Sorry I got you into this!

If you want to send me your email addy (mine is eco2geek-at-comcast-dot-net), I can just email you the binaries and you can put 'em where they need to go and see if it works.

Yeah, it's a kludge, but it beats tearing your hair out. (I'm beginning to think the only "safe" way to install things is to download the *.deb binaries from Debian's package list, paying close attention to the version numbers, and then using "dpkg -i packagename.deb".)

Now that you've tried Linux, you know you're hooked and you'll just reinstall it anyway. At least dual-boot.