newbie: KDE runs fine as root, but not user: what's wrong?

[Scott Alan Burch]

I just got my YDL 2.2 & KDE running fine, except that KDE runs only under 
root, not as user. It is probably obvious to someone, but what am I doing 
wrong? I have a 9500 with a Powerlogix G3 running at 338 Mhz, 320 MB RAM, 
and a [stupid!, but that's another story...] ATI Mach64 GX card with 4MB VRAM.

I created an /.xinitrc file in my home directory containing "startkde" [no 
quotes in file] as the only command. Using startx will launch X, and KDE 
tries to boot, but KCMInit crashes, then Panel and then others. I 
invariably have to kill it with control-option-delete.

thanks!  ##  scott