I have slackware 9.0 and I run gnome. Anyway, slackware boots up, and then I run "startx". Usually on the first time (cold boot) it doesn't work. It loads up to a blank screen, and totally hangs the system. The other half of the time it works like a champ.

anyway, I set up XF86Config for the "radeon" type of device using the "ati" driver and "65535" kilobytes of video ram. Those are the only changes I made (in addition to adding a 1600x1200 24bit mode.

System specs:
Pentium 4-m 1.7ghz
384MB RAM
10GB partition on 40GB drive
Radeon 7500 mobility
Some soundmax audio

I had this same problem with my machine (i845 chipset).
I had 5 as the default runlevel. The workaround I found was to go to 3 do a insmod i830 and then startx. This used to work so
I put an modprobe i830 somewhere in rc.local.
This gives me some error while booting..
but magically things are working. (dont ask me how why etc.) as I havent noticed the problem after that.

How the hell did you figure that out?? heheh, thanks, I'm off to try that.