Well, thats part of the "strangeness" that I've had with Kubuntu sorted.

I don't understand why, but the problem with disappearing taskbar/kicker panel, that I had in my partner Clares' user account, has been cured by moving the .kde file and restarting the X server.

I'm not completely happy with that cure, because I don't understand why it should have worked. Surely anything that gets changed as a user should still mean that the basic "desktop facilities" work, but they didn't. I'm left "none the wiser", but I suppose it will keep Clare from nagging me with those "you've been meddling with that bloody computer again haven't you?" comments.

Now all I need to do, is work out how to get the sudo disabled - I'm given to understand that I probably can't remove it, but I can stop the users using it! and just make it so that only root can.

We'll see.