Problems with KDE3 on SuSE 8.0

[Bob George]

Hi all,

I've started having a problem with KDE on SuSE 8.0. Everything was 
generally working well, and I'd set up accounts for myself and the 
family, thinking I'd move everyone over to Linux fairly quickly. I'd 
had great success, including setting up desktops to include the 
personal wallpapers and all the settings they'd used on Windows.

Then "something happened". It MAY be related to having attempted to 
install wdm instead of kdm (I prefer it). This had been trivial under 
Debian, so I just assumed it would work. At that point, X would take 
forever to start up. I removed wdm, reinstalled most of KDE and all 
seemed better. I can log into MY account and root under X just fine, 
and all appears perfectly normal. However, NOBODY ELSE can. I didn't 
realize this until someone was actually trying to USE this new system 
I've been pushing of course.

On login, the KDE startup screen proceeds right up until just it says 
loading window manager", then it pauses for a LONG time where it would 
normally show the "loading desktop" message. Finally, it just quits, 
and the user is dropped to a blank, grey screen with the log display 
showing. No dock appears and pressing mouse buttons has no effect.

I've tried creating a pristine user account with no improvement.

The same users can log in using twm or mwm just fine (except they hate 
it).

System details: It's a pretty generic SuSE 8.0 install with the online 
updates applied as of about a week ago. Hardware is dual-celeron 500 
system with 512MB RAM and 60GB disk, running kernel 2.4.18-64GB-SMP.

Any ideas on where to start troubleshooting KDE appreciated. I think 
I've narrowed it down to something breaking within KDE, but I'm not 
sure where to start.

Any help appreciated. Thanks,

- Bob

DISCLAIMER: I know there are a multitude of reasons not to use either 
KDE or SuSE. I'm trying to learn both assuming they will be common. 
Normally I'm a Debian guy working at the shell prompt.