Is FreeBSD too complicated for me?

Over the years, I have used Windows ME, Windows XP, OS X (from Tiger to Lion), Haiku and many Linux distros, particularly Ubuntu. And I never had anything like as many problems as I have experienced in FreeBSD.
Now, this is by no means the fault of the OS as, from my experience with the forum, there always is a solution to whatever problem I've come across.
Maybe I have to conclude that I'm too stupid for FreeBSD --- but I'm going to wait a while before settling for that conclusion.
This OS is like one of those old-fashioned mazes where, if you take a wrong turn, you just end up digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole from which there is no exit. a perfectly functioning FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE by inflicting it with "portupgrade -a" I have now had to conclude that there is just no way back and a new clean install is required.
In my last attempt to resolve the situation, I reasoned that my problem was to do with applications and not with the OS itself.
So, very reasonably, I deleted all packages with
pkg_delete -a
and then proceded to install /x11/gdm.
However, this repeatedly stopped for a variety of reasons including:
1) p5-XML-Parser-2.40 is already installed
2) /devel/m4 not installed
3) /sysutils/intltool out of date.
And, yes, I had updated ports with "portsnap fetch update" before attempting the gdm install.
So, it looked like my FreeBSD had been irreparably damaged and the only thing for it was a new install.
I did this by burning the iso to a CD and installing WITHOUT installing ports from the CD (as I'm told that they will be out of date).
This went without problems and I'm currently installing /x11/gnome2 in order to get a GUI Desktop.

Incidentally, I came across this guide to install FreeBSD on an EeePC (actually uses 701). In particular, it explains how to install a more updated FreeBSD version than is available from within Unetbootin.
As I had no luck in installing a hackintosh version of OS X on my EeePC 901, perhaps I'll try FreeBSD.