ConTeXt installation on Linux -- i despare

[Hraban <angerweit@gmx.net>]

Hello again!

I had these problems with some fonts (not only Palatino, even Lucida)
and couldn't create pdf...
I tried to fix "everything" by deleting all TeX packages, doing a
re-install of teTeX, deleting all ConTeXt files, re-installing the
latest cont-tmf.zip

To ensure that TeX can find all font files, I linked the font
directories of Ghostscript and all other (/usr/share/fonts) to the
appropriate section of texmf/fonts

Symbolic links to the perl scripts (texexec etc.) are created in
/usr/bin

I edited the following files
(after instructions of "how to install ConTeXt"):
fmtutil.cnf       (fmtutil --edit)
pdftex.cfg        (added context.map)
cont-usr.tex
cont-sys.tex      (copy of ~.rme)
texmf.cnf
texexec.ini       (copy of ~.rme)

While "texexec --make" only produced errors like
"texmf: format "config-de" not available"
I tried several commands mentioned by Ed Cashin in an old mail:

texhash (over and over...)
texconfig init
texconfig confall
texlinks
fmtutil --all
updmap

"texexec --make --alone" stops with an memory buffer overflow.

What shall I do?

(I'm proud to announce, that I can manage my mail on Linux now,
but that's the singular positive news...)

Groetjes!
Hraban.