HELP!? I'm at total loss here

Nice introduction and a little background

Hey dudes and dudettes,
I have been designated webmaster for an organization I'm with, I can't find a correct translation for the word of what we're doing, but it's about training and competing with dogs ("Brukshunklubb" in swedish).

I thought that I'd make a proper site, where the members (and others) can actually interact. So I've scouted out the most CMS/Portals/blogwares etc. around and found Drupal. Which is the only one I like, although I'm at total loss since there isn't anything you can't do with Drupal! It may sound strange, but since Drupal is formed the way it is, it's really hard to "categorize" for a newbie if you get what I mean.

The things that I want is pretty simple, a nice frontpage, a photogallery (gallery.module looks great), a forum and a linkfarm.
So far I've come to understand the basics, I've set up several Drupal's, so the frontpage and forums I can make... It's worse with the gallery and linkfarm.

the actual question below here

Gallery, there's three kinds of roles; admins, members and authenticated users. Anybody can send in an application, must be registred to post comments (the usual setup I guess), but I want every member to have they're own photo gallery and a shared one (for photos from competitions, group photos etc.).
What can you actually do with the gallery.module? I have a hard time to find documentation...

• Is it possible to have Drupal sneak in and have Gallery2 make a gallery when I upgrade an "authenticated user" to "member"?
• Which gallery theme is best (read easiest) to integrate with Drupal?

Linkfarm, is there anything like this for Drupal? I've asked earlier, but I couldn't get a straight answer, some said no, some said yes, some said possibly...
Nothing fancy needed here, I just want to be able to categorize links. Like "other orgs." (if possible by county and country), "accessories shops" (if possible by type) etc.

I am not asking you guys to make this for me, but could you please point me to stuff I really need to read, modules to use and most important a really easy "how-to-use-gallery-with-drupal-in-really-easy-wording" guide. I am at total disposal, meaning that I have my own dedicated server, so I can setup things the way I (*cough* you) want for best effect (oh, and I have a couple of spare servers too, for testing purposes).
I really need to get the thing rolling, then I can catch up on the deeper things as I go along.

Also, have you done anything smiliar to this? How did you go? Care to share your trade secrets? ;P

Cheers, Gunnar - the totally lost one

ps.
Yes, I could have read all the documentation for the whole Drupal project, the complete Gallery2 wiki etc. but with a baby that's turning 5 months the 18th (he's starting to get teeth!), a full time job and two competition dogs there just isn't enough hours in a day... sadly.