Hi

AFAIK, kdm/xdm uses ~/.xsession and not ~/.xinitrc to startup your
session once you login. Do you have a ~/.xsession file?

My way of doing it is to have startke in my ~/.xinitrc file to ensure I
can run kde from a text login and then mv(1) the file to .xsession. BTW,
I do an exec startdke as the last line in .xession.

Hope it helps!

--et