removed gnome and re-booted. There was no Xorg or graphical terminal running (even though I have previously installed xfce)
installed kdm and re-booted. Now there is a login screen perfectly displayed in the graphical window and I can login and get a desktop ... except that it is xfce 5 S root 741 1 0 80 0 - 1065 poll_s 19:54 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/kdm -config /var/run/kdm/kdmrc 4 S root 743 741 0 80 0 - 40710 poll_s 19:54 tty7 00:00:04 /usr/bin/X :0 vt7 -br -nolisten tcp -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-ayuEra 1 S root 1250 741 0 80 0 - 1155 unix_s 19:58 ? 00:00:00 -:0
