Okay, after a long session in a root shell, and with the kind help of Ankh, I have got Gnome 2 installed and running. So far its been nice and stable too. Xchat only dumped out once. Nothing else has dumped out on me.
I even managed to get some xslt and xml files updated and cvs'd. My personal services.xml project is progressing well.
I seem to have the rest of the day free. Time to go for a cycle ride, me thinks.