I've just experienced this bug and found the cause on my system. mkfontdir was not installed, so the fonts.alias file was incorrect. I suppose that mkfontdir should be moved from xutils to xfonts-base, or xfonts-base should depend on xutils.
- could not open default font 'fixed' sam th
- Re: could not open default font 'fixed' Thomas E. Vaughan
- Re: could not open default font 'fixed' Justin Wheeler
- Re: could not open default font 'fixed' Aaron Lehmann
- Re: could not open default font 'fixed' Branden Robinson