Description of Problem: I wanted a system which could run X but not the graphical login so I deselected gdm and XFree86-xdm. After the system was installed and I logged on, I did a startx. To my surprise, metacity/gnome did not start. After some experimenting (installing gdm and XFree86-xdm), I found that the missing package was xinitrc. If XFree86 is installed, xinitrc should be installed by default and not just when XFree86-xdm is installed.
You can install it. xinitrc doesn't have any requirement on XFree86-xdm, or on gdm. You should be able to select xinitrc in the individual package selection screen if you wish to install without xdm or gdm. Tim
While I accept this, I believe it would be better to install xinitrc if XFree86 is installed even if none of the *dm packages are installed since it is needed to run startx properly.