It really was bug 444003 chewing over here. One of the work-arounds for that one is as root: echo "xserver-xorg shared/default-x-server select xserver-xorg" | debconf-set-selections The computer goes quiet for a couple seconds then the root prompt returns. After that, dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and answer questions and when finished I got an /etc/X11/xorg.conf that had 64 lines in it.
