[ale] gdm crashes my laptop

[jheim at math.wisc.edu (John Heim)]

Hi, I have a problem with gdm. I'm blind and I never used the linux GUI. I 
know nothing about gnome. I installed debian etch/stable  on a laptop  and 
allowed it to install the desktop environment. That seemed to work. But then 
I had to upgrade to lenny/testing to get the new gnome screen reader, orca, 
to install.

Before I tried to install orca, I did this:

1. Modified /etc/apt/sources.list cchanging etch to lenny.
2. Typed:
# apt-get update
# apt-get dist-upgrade.

That seemed to go fine. But when I tried to start gdm, it hung my computer. 
I had done the 2 steps above via ssh and it even crashed my ssh session. The 
keyboard on the laptop was unresponsive.

Perhaps I could try to reconfigure gdm?