Well, thought I'd put this up for anyone else running through what I had to go through to get my KDE running.
I compiled my KDE, and it didn't create any start up files. The docs said to run startx and then startkde, but I wanted everything up when I booted my system up. So, how did I do it? PS - My KDE was installed into /usr/local/kde. 1) Renamed /user/X11/bin/xdm to old.xdm and created a link from /usr/local/kde/bin/kdm to xdm in it's place. According to the KDE docs, this is no problem - and in practice, it works like a champ. 2) Edited /etc/X11/config and put in (or uncommented) start-xdm as the last line. This allows xdm (or in my case) kdm to start at boot up. 3) Edited /etc/X11/window-managers and put /usr/local/kde/bin/kwm as the first line. This brings up kwm when X starts the window managers. 4) Edited /etc/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0 and put the line /usr/local/bin/kde/kdmdesktop towards the end. This line is optional, and the only thing it seems to do is put the default KDE background up instead of the ugly xdm default. This only applies to the KDE login screen. 5) Edit /etc/X11/xdm/Xstartup_0 and right before the 'exit 0' statement, added all of the lines from the startkde script, except the 'kwm' line (since kwm was already started). These lines start all the KDE applications after the user logs in. All seems to work fine now, thanks to hours of searching tweaking and trial and error. But thought I'd help anyone else who needed it. Tell you one thing, I sure did learn all about how Linux, X, and KDE works. Which is a good thing. -Jay
