I too have installed Kubuntu for many, many people. Literally every week I would have to reset someone's borked KDE settings because they accidentally clicked or right clicked or dragged in the wrong place. After install I would simply ` cp .kde{,.BAK}` and set up SSH to restore it when needed.
For one user I even added `cp .kde{.BAK,}` to their login script. I wish that I remembered how, actually, because there seems to be only one way to get that to run before KDE reads it and I can't remember now.
I love configurability and everything from my fountain pen to my car is heavily modified. But normal people cannot seem to deal with the ability to modify their surroundings.
If accidentally clicking or dragging results in messing up their settings, I'd say the problem is a brittle user interface, not normal people having problems configuring their surroundings. If normal people cannot use the user interface, then the user interface has a design failure ("bug"), by definition. (Unless the intended audience is not normal people, but if that is the case for Linux, we shouldn't be installing Linux for normal users.)
> For one user I even added `cp .kde{.BAK,}` to their login script. I wish that I remembered how, actually, because there seems to be only one way to get that to run before KDE reads it and I can't remember now.
A quick reading of `/usr/bin/startkde` suggests that `~/.config/startupconfig` is sourced sufficiently early. Alternatively, `~/.profile` (or `/etc/profile`, for that matter) should also work, although that might be asking for trouble if the user knows how to open a terminal emulator.
For one user I even added `cp .kde{.BAK,}` to their login script. I wish that I remembered how, actually, because there seems to be only one way to get that to run before KDE reads it and I can't remember now.
I love configurability and everything from my fountain pen to my car is heavily modified. But normal people cannot seem to deal with the ability to modify their surroundings.