I don't use a desktop.
It takes about 3 seconds for startx to launch icewm using
icewm-session in either ~/.xsession or x-session-manager.
I used to use metacity (default with sarge) and it took 10 seconds
maybe, and then I tried using others and it now takes 5 minutes.
It's the window manager which causes it to hang for so long, but I can't
work out what the problem is.
I tried posting a similar message to gmane.linux.debian.user as
suggested in another thread, but it didn't seem to work. So if
the list gets 2 copies of this message that's the reason.