Upstream futex patch is targeted to be included in Debian kernel
images 3.2.16-1.
Ah, that's good to hear. Now if that initramfs-tools issue could be fixed upstream too... :|
I'm however surprised that the futex issue affects X as you described.
In my experience, X cursor only and garbled background were caused by
GNOME 3 defaulting to GnomeShell rather than Classic desktop.
Switching to Classic in the GDM banner fixed the problem for me.
Ah, I might have spoken too soon then. I'm still running unpatched, so I assumed this was the issue since on the Radeon 7000 it works fine. How do I switch it?