diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 648bfdc90..75936be09 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
+2008-11-18  Emmanuele Bassi  <ebassi@linux.intel.com>
+
+	* tests/conform/test-conform-main.c (main): Do not run the
+	conformance test suite if we are on X11 but we do not have
+	a DISPLAY available. Some of the tests require a DISPLAY,
+	and everything passes through a clutter_init() call which will
+	fail anyway. If we are running make distcheck on an headless
+	box we might as well just skip the conformance test suite
+	without a meaningless error.
+
 2008-11-18  Emmanuele Bassi  <ebassi@linux.intel.com>
 
 	* tests/conform/test-mesh-contiguous.c:
diff --git a/tests/conform/test-conform-main.c b/tests/conform/test-conform-main.c
index 19e7d6525..b70ab1caf 100644
--- a/tests/conform/test-conform-main.c
+++ b/tests/conform/test-conform-main.c
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+#include "config.h"
+
 #include <clutter/clutter.h>
 
 #include <glib.h>
@@ -30,6 +32,18 @@ int
 main (int argc, char **argv)
 {
   TestConformSharedState *shared_state = g_new0 (TestConformSharedState, 1);
+  const gchar *display;
+
+#ifdef HAVE_CLUTTER_GLX
+  /* on X11 we need a display connection to run the test suite */
+  display = g_getenv ("DISPLAY");
+  if (!display || *display == '\0')
+    {
+      g_print ("No DISPLAY found. Unable to run the conformance "
+               "test suite without a display.");
+      return EXIT_SUCCESS;
+    }
+#endif
 
   g_test_init (&argc, &argv, NULL);