GNOME Desktop on Mac OS X with Apple's X11

Greetings,

I'm new to OS X but not to *nix or computers in general. I'm currently running 10.4.3 and have installed and tried the latest Gnome packages from both Fink and Darwinports but end up with the exact same error when I try to launch a gnome-session from my .xinitrc file.

I get pop-up which says:

Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly.

The Settings Daemon restarted too many times

The last error message was:

Failed to activate 'OAFIID:GNOME_SettingsDaemon'

GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you login.

I've searched Google and this forum but can't find out the cause of or the fix to this error.

Does anyone know of a set of step by step instructions that will tell me exactly what to get from Fink or Darwinports and how to start up a gnome-session (e.g. the exact contents of the .xinitrc file and/or other method of starting up X with GNOME)?

Thank much!

17" Powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.3) iTunes 6.0; 20GB iPod