Open Stack

OK, I have a stupid question, but on the theory that if one person has a 
stupid question, others probably do as well, I'm going to ask it here.

I'm trying to test Debian, but I'm getting errors that don't seem to be 
"errors" so much as omissions.  For example, RabbitMQ won't start up 
properly, so I'm guessing there's something else I need to do.

Unfortunately, I'm not enough of an expert to know what to do to fix this.

So my first question is:  I got stuck in the very first steps, so maybe 
it's best to punt on Debian and focus on Ubuntu?

And my second question is: if not, where's the best place to get help 
with something like that?  IRC?

----  Nick