Thanks, Hans.  I wasn't at the broken computer when I wrote that, so 
here are the error messages.  I got twm to work, and I have some time to 
try those hacks.  In the meantime:


[after apt-get update]
alexanderdebian:/home/alexander# apt-get -t stable install kde
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  kde: Depends: kdelibs3 but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libarts or
                libarts-alsa but it is not going to be installed or
                libarts-bin but it is not installable
       Depends: libkmid or
                libkmid-alsa but it is not going to be installed or
                libkmid-bin but it is not installable
       Depends: kdebase but it is not going to be installed or
                kdebase3 but it is not installable
       Depends: kdebase-audiolibs but it is not going to be installed or
                kdebase3-audiolibs but it is not installable
       Depends: kdebase-libs but it is not going to be installed or
                kdebase3-libs but it is not installable
       Depends: kdebase-doc but it is not going to be installed or
                kdebase3-doc but it is not installable
       Depends: kscreensaver but it is not going to be installed or
                kscreensaver3 but it is not installable
       Depends: kab but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: karm but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: knotes but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: kpm but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: kfract but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: koffice but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
alexanderdebian:/home/alexander# dpkg -l kde
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: 
uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
pn  kde            <none>         (no description available)