[arch-general] Arch is ummnn different: my 1st installation: tried to install xfce...OOPS!

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

Hello, I've been using various Linux distros for a while now. I just
decided to give Arch Linux a try. But I'm a little bit lost. I'm used to
distros like Xubuntu, PCLinuxOS, OpenSuSE, etc... Where I don't need to
personally understand what order I need to install which packages to get 
at least one GUI desktop up & running...

The install itself went ok. But I needed to add a few things.

First I used the list of typical tasks for pacman from the installation
guide, to figure out how to look for a package and install it with pacman.

I installed mc and vim without a problem. Then I thought it would be nice
if I could get a desktop up. I did a: 

pacman -Si xfce|less 

and looked for a package that might get me to a minimal desktop I could work with.
I thought maybe xfdesktop...

pacman -S xfdesktop

It wanted (I think) 26 packages to satisfy the dependencies... Sounded low
to me but what do I know? I figured the next step would be to ask for help
(or a good step by step how-to) But sooner or later I was going to want
xfce so I said yes...

I didn't get any errors until the last package (xfdesktop itself) Then there was
an error with a line number (oops I didn't write it down) And I think something
about gtk & icons, (something not existing...) <sigh> {If I'd figured out
how to activate GPM I'd have pasted the error into a text file so that I
could accurately report what it said.}

When pacman reports an error, listing just one line number like that,
does it stop processing. Or does the fact that there was only one error
(about icons I think) mean that everything else in the package installed
successfully???

More to the point: Will I need to figure out how to uninstall xfdesktop to resolve
the error?

Could some nice Arch user point me at enough step by step instructions so
that I can get enough of a gui up to use a browser like firefox so I can
try to find solutions via the web while Arch is actually running???

Please!

-- 
|    ^^^   ^^^
|    <o>   <o>      Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
|        ^               J(tWdy)P
|       ___         <<jtwdyp at ttlc.net>>
|      '   `