Gnome/X font smoothing

Hello All,

When I startx as a user, with gnome-session in my .xinitrc Gnome2 starts
up fine and looks fine. When as root I run gdm (without starting X
first, gdm starts it) then login as the user selecting Gnome session the
same Gnome session loads up but this time the fonts are antialiased.
Also when X starts it shows a watch cursor instead of the X cursor while
it is starting up. What is gdm doing when it starts X that is giving me
antialiased fonts? I want antialiased fonts also when I run startx. I
checked ps aux to see if any special parameters are passed to X, but I
can't see anything that looks special.

How do I get antialiased fonts in Gnome2 when started from startx and
.xinitrc ?

Thanks,

Joseph