First Experiences with X.org's X11 Server?

Slashdot Reader CanadianCrackPot decided to be adventurous and went and installed the latest offering from X.org's X-Server project. Below, you'll find "the basics" of his "first attempt to install [their] X Window Server on a system with a 450 MHz PIII, and Diamond Viper V770 (TNT2 chipset) graphics card, running Mandrake 10.0 Official (FTP download of everything but the RPMS.cooker dir)." To make a long story short, while he did have some luck with installing it, running it was...problematic. He asks: "I'm just wondering how other Slashdot readers are doing with the new X11R6 server, and more importantly, how did you install it?" "I decided to try installing X.org's X Server today while I had nothing to do here's the results:

• get a test bed system: check
• get sources: check
• ./configure: N/A...I'm worried
• make World: check
• make install; make install.man: check
• startx: crash
• xf86config: check
• startx, again: check -- now I need a manager
• startgnome: galeon not found (crash)
• startkde: crash"

If you've had any luck getting X.org's X-server running on your machine, what hurdles did you have to overcome before it worked?