So I decided to throw caution to the wind and install the KDE3 debs. 
Unfortunately, two Very Bad Things are now plague me. One, I can only use 
kppp as root. It says that it cannot open the modem when I try as a normal 
user. I confirmed that I am in the dialout group, and it works fine with 
root--I'm sending this, obviously. The second thing is that the fonts are all 
hopelessly foobar. In an ironic twist, some (but not all) of the TrueType 
fonts work (namely, Arial and Times New Roman), but all the other fonts, 
including the fixed-width fonts, all default to an illegible cursive font. 
I've tried using different font servers, or no font server, but keep getting 
that wretched cursive font.
	Mind you, I did not purge any of the previous settings; I'm at a loss as to 
why its behaving this way. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
	:Peter