> I created the hard link to ~/.xinitrc named as 
> ~/.xsession, no prob. Then I substituted "xdm" from above 

i have only .xsession no .xinitrc in home. works right.

> with "kdm=YES" and "kdm_flags="" in /etc/rc.conf 
> supposing that to be what was ment. 
> 
> It doesn't work. Nothing bad happens; it just doesn't 
> boot straight to X. 

did you set Xservers file OK. maybe it want to use vt already allocated
by getty.

> I do have ~/.xinitrc so that it works okay when I login 
> at the command line, do su, and then type startx. KDE 
> starts up fine then (except for audio...but that's 
> another matter).

BTW. try better wm, unless you have too much memory, too fast CPU, too
much time and too large monitor