see bug 75882 or 68331. The way KDE3.2 starts up has changed considerable from 3.1.
ok guys its taken three days to compile kde3.2 on my laptop, i did it as a normal user for safety, .... im using Debian (installed from knoppix) its been a hard slog to get here
My sympathies. I unsuccessfully tried to compile 3.2 for Mandrake, eventually found rpm's. For Debians...did you know KDE3.2.2 is in unstable?
'apt-get -t unstable install kde' gets most of it in one big install (you have to remove 3.1 first). but maybe you wanted a more 'custom' install.