Running KDE for the first time fails to start the kwin window manager. There is an error message in .xsession-errors from kwin about "manager selection being already taken" or something to that effect (sorry, didn't save the exact error message - you will see it if you can reproduce this bug). Looks like kpersonalizer is trying to start kwin for the second time after finishing, and something gets messed up somewhere. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Remove (or move away) all .kde* dirs 2. Run startx, and just press next to all prompts in the KDE wizard (note that kwin seems to be running while the kpersonalizer wizard is open) 3. After finishing the wizard, start any app, and notice there is no window manager running anymore! WORKAROUND: Unmerging the kpersonalizer package solves this. You get no wizard on first start, so you just have to configure those settings in Control Center, but atleast the kwin problem does not occur. Version: The 3.4.0_rc1 split KDE ebuilds. Rest of the system is also fully up-to-date ('emerge -uD world' shows no packages pending for upgrade).
Probably it was http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100261, it should be fixed for 3.4.