It was there. After I upgraded Firefox (have forgotten the number and all I can bring up is 3.0.14, the old one) the flag disappeared and no amount of resetting it from the keyboard layout screen has brought it back. In addition, I accidentally moved the bottom taskbar to the right edge of the screen and can't drag it back.

It sounds like you have lost your system tray. That's where the kb indicator lives. Sometimes when logging in you might get error messages about things failing to load. Your system tray may have been one of them.

Right-click on an empty area on the panel, and choose "add applet to panel" Maximise because its a pain to scroll through, and find "system tray".

To move the panel, as long as it is unlocked (which it needs to be for the above, btw), then you can just pick it up from an empty area on it, and drag it to the bottom of the screen.

Then perhaps you should lock it!

I have many students with their panel on the edge and no system tray, so you are not alone!

Thanks for your reply. I can't tell if the panel is locked; I can't grab to move it, but it must have been unlocked when it moved without my intention. There is no selection for "add applet" in 9.10. This leaves my other user unable to do anything as I have Dvorak-EN as default and he's strictly 'qwerty'. And he won't use the laptop, which I am on now (XP, I'm sorry to say).

Sorry, I don't know kubuntu very well, but perhaps it uses KDE 4 by now? In which case, right-click on an empty part of the panel and you should be able to either "unlock widgets" or "panel options / add widget". The system tray is a widget.

To move the panel, do right-click "panel options / screen edge". Another bar appears, and you can pick it up from the words "screen edge". Close the extra bar after moving.

If there is no empty part for right-clicking, then remove some buttons for now and put them back later.

Hope this helps.