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!