Thanks Stephen,

The origynal hd install was knoppix 3.3, anyway I did uncomment and try upgrade and managed to zap jkdm pretty much out of the water. The machine boots up in text mode, I invoke kdm (not found) so xdm and ICEWM for now.

Now, would it be a good idea at this time to apt-get remove (Purge?) kde and then attemt a reinstall or might I lose application settings, data or the like.

OTOH, this might be an opportunity to check out some other GUIs

Thanks again.