I am currently fooling around with a debianinstall. The problem is that I can't get X to work ok.
With xfree 3.6.x i do get a screen but no mouse. There is a pointer at the bottom of the screen
and when I move the mouse menus start appearing and disappearing.
I upgraded to 4.1.0 with apt and got a screen and a crosshair for a mousepointer there - before
I configured the xf86conf.
The mousepointer disappears after about 30 secs there.
When I configure xfree i don't get a x-screen anymore at all.
I used both xfree 3.6 and 4.2 with various other distros and always use the same setup - no problem
there.
Did try the debian mailinglist archives. Anybody knows a good source for info about this.

In your xfree config, you should set your mouse to /dev/psaux instead of /dev/mouse if youre using a ps/2 mouse.
And if you thinking about that you WM doesn´t start, in debian the default is Twm (or what it is called) and looks like that, just press your left mousebutton, to get the menu. IF you have installed another WM you can write f.ex. "startx blackbox" to start blackbox.

I did set the mouse to /dev/psaux but that didn't help.
With xf3.6.x the WM starts but the mouse doesn't work with /dev/mouse or /dev/psaux
With xf4.1.0 the WM doesn't start at all.
The real strange thing is that when i change from xf3 to xf4 with apt and startx i do get a screen (gnome) and a crosshair as a mousepointer for about 30 seconds. Then i do get a regular pointer for about 10 seconds and after that its no more mouse.
This is if i just install xf4.2.0 and don't write a XF86Conf file for it - after i do xf86config the x-server doesn't start at all.
If i do have a menu open when the mouse dies i can navigate that window with the keyboard but it is mirrored e.g. i hit the up key and it is moving down.
It seems to me that something at the x startup goes wrong and has the xsystem hanging at different stages of the startup because i first get a crosshair then a pointer and then nothing

Hmm. Maybe you should try to remove the xfree, and the x11 folder in /etc. Then install it again with:
apt-get install task-x-window-system

Thanks - got it fixed - i think.
Get a screen and the mouse works - sort of.
Seems like i was missing some xfree stuff that wasn't installed by apt for whatever reason.
I combed thru all available packages and installed everything that looked even remotely related to the xsystem.
Now if i ever find out which one of those packages did the trick I'll post it.