how to disable kubuntu-default-settings

[Michael Bach (gmx)]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Michael Bach (gmx) wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>
>> A page that I found a while ago [1] and some recent discussion on
>> another thread (first impressions of dolphin) made me actually bring up
>> this question:
>>
>> How to disable kubuntu-default-settings entirely?
>>
>> Simply removing the package doesn't work because of dependencies. 
> 
> Sure it does.  The only thing dependent on it is kubuntu-desktop (and
> something named ichthux-desktop, but that's definitely non-standard). 
> kubuntu-desktop is purely a metapackage to force installation of things
> exactly like kubuntu-default-settings.

So, but if I were to remove kubuntu-desktop or kubuntu-default-settings
I would end up with broken dependencies of other packages!?

> 
>> What is it exactly that this package changes?
> 
> It installs some wallpaper, some themes, huge numbers of default config
> files and cursors.

Ok. This is what the package description says as well.

> None of these should actually make any difference if
> you have already used the apps involved.  ie, it doesn't change the configs
> under ~/.kde/.

But on a fresh user accout, ~/.kde/ is almost "empty" and gets filled
with user data (eg. Kontact) or by modified settings of applications.
However, the initial applications settings (some) are dictated by
settings in /usr/share , under normal circumstances.

> 
> For the actual changes it tries to make to things you _might_ notice,
> see /var/lib/dpkg/info/kubuntu-default-settings.postinst.  It certainly
> seems to me that it will only make those changes if you've not changed the
> defaults in the first place.

And it does more: To get a grips of what this package does I downloaded
it and browsed its content with midnight commander (mc handels deb
packages transparently). It seems that the packages creates a tree of
directories in /usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings in which it puts
configuration files for a number of kde apps. Second, it writes a
/etc/kderc which makes kde using a different default directory for
application configurations:

$  cat /etc/kderc
[Directories]
userProfileMapFile=/etc/kde-user-profile

[Directories-default]
#prefixes=/usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kde-profile/default/
prefixes=/usr/share/

This is my recently modified /etc/kderc. Of course, everything in ~/.kde
  still has priority.