[kde-linux] kdm oddity

[pkaplan1 at comcast.net]

I've been trying to run kde4.1 on kubuntu and have been met with some very strange desktop 
behavior in a multihead laptop configuration.  I recently discovered that this is related to how kde 4.1 is launched.

If I launch 4.1 from the default kdm3 display manager, the kde4.1 desktop is displayed in a (wrong) way that 
is difficult to describe.  Only parts of the desktop are active.  The content of the laptop lcd are placed on the external lcd and vice versa, but the left/right orientation is correct (as specified in xorg.conf).  One result of this presentation is that the desktop cashew is off screen somewhere.  Also, most attempts to move panels result in 4.1 crashing.

In contrast, when I kill kdm and launch kde4.1 with:

startx /usr/lib/kde4/bin/startkde

I get a well behaved kde 4 desktop.  Interestingly a number of kde 3 system tray apps (knetload, smb4k 0.9.3 and guidance-power-manager) appear in the 4.1 system tray (I thought they 
weren't supposed to be able to run in 4.1).

Is this a bug in kubuntu's kdm (s) configuration?  Has anyone else noticed this?  How about with kdm-kde4 or another dm?

Paul