7.10 and Thinkpad T22 display

[Occam]

Using the alternative CD it took a _really_ long time for Kubuntu 7.10 to 
install on the T22 (hanging at 40% and 60% of looking at repositories for 
more than 30 minutes - probably more than an hour).

Now booting into recovery more works ok - but a normal boots results in a 
blank screen, after a line telling that kdm is started and one more line 
(which goes so quickly that I cannot read it) are displayed.

I suspected X (of course) but where is the x log? nothing about x in syslog. 
Normally I use mc to check through directories and files - but mc "is not 
found" when I try to apt-get it.

Any hints on
a) what went wrong?
b) how I can fix it?
c) where (the equivalent of) Xorg.log can be found?
d) how I can get mc onto the Kubuntu system?