Unfortunatly, stable softwares are way behind the latest. So the path goes like this:
Stable > Testing > Unstable
Can I rename them Stable > ConfuZing > Unusable ???????? teehee ;-)
OK, so I'm typing this on my now half-testing, half stable debian box. It's taken me 12 hours!!! I NEVER want to go through that again. Anyhoo, this is what I did: I looked at www.moof.org.uk, it gave me some ideas. It wasn't the config at all.
dist-upgrade had removed various packages, seeming almost f***ing randomly. The clue was all the "rc"s dpkg -l gave.
I actually totally reinstalled stable, and tried again. This time I just updated bits and bobs, I kept the output of my old dpkg -l on a floppy, and compared to the new (also broken) system.
To cut a very long story short, I manually installed all the "rc"d packages beginning with the letter x!
It also removed all gnome packages, xdm etc. grrr and humbug.
But now I have x working. :D
Now to get some apps working...
Many thanks to all& their suggestions!