confusing behavior from kwin on potato

[alice@cascoind.com]

Ok, I've got the 'rkrusty' line in my sources.list...

earlier last week I do an 'update' in dselect 'cause I'm looking for something 
else and I suddenly get a bunch of packages selected.... looks like there was a 
change from KDE 1.1.1 to 2.1.1 sometime since the last time I updated (yeah, 
I don't do it _that_ often)

when I first tried running startx after that I suddenly had no window 
manager... ick...

I installed fvwm just to have _something_ and while that's running I can 
select 'kde' from the window manager menu option, but the next time I use 
xwindows I get fvwm again...

so various things I tried.... tried using dpkg to reinstall the old kdebase... run 
startx, get a blank screen (well, blank fuzzy screen, that grey 'I'm gonna put 
something on the screen as soon as I figure out what... oh... I don't know 
what' that x window sometimes does) 

put the 'new' kdebase back...

tried pointing etc/alternatives/x-window-manager to /usr/bin/kwin

ok now I get kdesktop, a lovely blue.... but nothing else.... no menus, I click I 
get no menus... hrm

installed kdm... I hate my computer automatically going into xwindows but 
hey, for now it would be a start....

ok... brings up the login... I login... and.... I get the kdesktop but again no 
'desktop' just pretty blue shading

hrm.... ok, kill the manager and it pops the login up again.... this time I go in 
as failsafe, run startkde from the bash console... get some "I'm not happy this 
isn't how you do it" messages (more details if interested :) from the console 
but kwin starts up...

hmmm, ok, something's definitely.... missing... or still sprocked..... any 
suggestions on where to continue looking? Relevant FAQ's? Manuals? email 
addresses? 

or should I just comment out the rkrusty line, move the old kde .debs to a 
directory somewhere, put that in my sources.list and see if I can talk dselect 
into putting things back the way they were?

anyways.... any suggestions or pointers to FM's to R would be appreciated 
:)Alice M. Pinard
Casco Indemnity Company
alice@cascoind.com