Given the thousands of successful users of Moodle, it is much more likely to be a result of a configuration problem or oddity on your system (as you found out). We will give you all the help you need - all we ask is that you be nice!
It is the nature of PHP and not Moodle that fatal errors do not always make it to the web screen. An important debugging step (that is in the FAQ) is to check for errors turning up in the Apache error_log file. Moodle *does* make a number of checks of your system during the install phase. Perhaps we should check for the database drivers being installed for your selected database. You might want to enter a feature suggestion in moodle.org/bugs.
Update:
Just had a look at the code and in fact install.php *does* check for the mysql extensions being present. So, reading between the lines, you seem to have had a problem with your actual mysql install rather than the PHP install. I think that there is almost no chance of Moodle spotting that sort of problem. You were unlucky I'm afraid.