Me either .. i am not A debian user, but perhaps you can find the answer here :
http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...re-req.en.html
http://www.mikevitale.com/1905s303.html
http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive...3/threads.html

and about "startX" i found the answer here :
Does the file /usr/X11R6/bin/X exist? It should be installed by the
xserver-common package. Do you have an X server installed? Try:

apt-get install xserver-xfree86
Real post here

I copy the statement to make sure you got the point.