OK, continuing:
- before booting, I had to put a 3 in the boot line to get into init 3 mode (XDM without a desktop is not very smart, I found out

)
- installing pcmanfm (because Fluxbox needs it): pulls in another 58,8 MBytes

(gnome-icon-theme alone needs around 34 MBytes)
- then I was able to install 'task-fluxbox' which pulled in another ~9 MBytes
- after a normal reboot (without 3), I tried logging in via XDM -- failed!
- so rebooting with 3 again, installed gdm (maybe it works better than XDM?), pulling in another 32,6 MBytes
- normal reboot, then I got that darn 'setting hostname localhost' waiting game again. Arrrgghhhh!
- I had enough waiting, so I called strng-c, and got the message 'cannot create temporary file!', still hanging
So: installing GDM does break something.
I'll give it a new try. There must be a way out ...
