I received my debian potato 2.2r3 CD's last night and got straight on with the install(After backing up everything!). The installation went quite well up until installing and configuring X. I used the simple package installation method selecting samba, gnome, X and a couple of other options. But when using startx I was advised that XF86_SVGA was not installed.
After chatting with some people in yahoo I managed to get X installed using the impressive apt-get(First time!)

Now when I startx I get a messy/grey/blue blocky screen. I can kill X with ctrl+alt+bkspc which brings me back to the console, but still has the blocky screen. I know the console works as I can use reboot even though I can't see it. I can see parts of the screen change when I move the mouse. I selected the NVIDIA DDR (generic) driver during XF86Setup as this was the driver I used in Mandrake 8.0. Do I need to download another. I started off configuring 8bit at 640x480 and also tried 800x600 at 8bit both having the same result. My monitor definately supports upto 1280x1024. I used to run MD with 1024x768 at 24bit.

I have exec /usr/bin/gnome-session in ~/.xinitrc

Can anyone help me get X/Gnome going?

My hardware is as follows:

Pentium III 450MHz
256MB RAM
5GB partition
Hercules GeForceII MX
Fujitsu 17" monitor

Thanks

Cheeky

well, XF86_SVGA, is from X version 3, not version 4, whioch you obviously want to use if possible.

make sure all the X4 files are installed, and use

xf86config --expert
to choose which version of x you want to use. I've found however that my system ketp reverting to version 3, so i removed X3, so it didn't have the option. worked fine after that

Thanks. How do I find out if all the X4 files are installed and how do I remove X3 if need be?

Well, i've not used debian, so i've no idea how to remove files. Just check the version number of your X .deb files, and install anything from version 4.
One handy thing i forgot to mention, is that if you run

ls -l /etc/X11/X

then it should tell you which version of X you're actively using, by which file it points to. X4 should alway point to /.../XFree86, anything else should imply version 3.

try dselect to add/remove packages,