What's going on is almost certainly that you're using apt-get, rather than one of the installation tools designed for newbies, like aptitude or dselect. Apt-get ignores package recommendations; if you're a newbie, you do not want to ignore package recommendations. A recommended package is one that nobody but an expert who really knows what he's doing would want to leave out.
In this case, you have probably left out font support, which is a recommendation, rather than a dependency, because one font server can support many machines, so it would be bad to force font support to be installed on each and every machine (especially since fonts can be quite large). Install the x-window-system-core package, or run aptitude and let it show you the recommended packages that you need to install. -- Chris Waters | Pneumonoultra- osis is too long [EMAIL PROTECTED] | microscopicsilico- to fit into a single or [EMAIL PROTECTED] | volcaniconi- standalone haiku
