hi,

i'm using kde on my notebook running netbsd-current w/o problems. some
of the problems you describe I've had with kde-beta3, especially the
looping of kdm. using beta4 they've gone away. the only modification
to the original xdm setup files in /usr/X11/lib/X11/xdm is in Xsetup_0:

#! /bin/sh
# $XConsortium: Xsetup_0,v 1.3 93/09/28 14:30:31 gildea Exp $
/usr/X11R6/bin/kdmdesktop
xconsole -geometry 480x130-0-0 -daemon -notify -verbose -fn fixed -exitOnFail

the kdmdesktop line is added.

/usr/X11R6/bin/kdm is hardlinked to /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm, and I've
commented out kaudioserver and kwmsound in /usr/X11R6/bin/startkde
which is called from my .xsession.

-ks