Anyhow, with a simple apt-get, I now have X working, and can move on to
the next problem. Gnome won't start.
I have gdm installed, giving me a login dialog (greeter) in which I
enter a user id and password. Pressing OK would then normally take me to
the Gnome desktop for that user. <slight grumble> the greeter looks a
bit different now, resizing itself between the user id and password
entry, which is slightly irritating. I thought I remembered having two
separate entry fields for id and password, but I could be mistaken
</slight grumble>.
What happens now is that the screen blanks for about a second, then the
greeter comes back again, without logging in. When I look in
~/.gnome-errors, there are a couple of warnings, but one fatal error
which seems to be the root of the problem: the script
/etc/gdm/Sessions/Gnome calls for the execution of another script
/usr/bin/gnome-session, which is sadly missing from my system. Despite
looking through the update instructions, I found no mention of this
script or where it comes from. Anyone have any ideas?