>> My first usability test of Trinity was in a virtual machine. Trinity
>> loaded just fine --- but ignored all of my previous ~/.kde profile
>> settings. Hey! What? :)
>>
>> Not to mention the evil bouncing mouse cursor! Okay, I can solve that
>> irritant when I build the package.
>>
>> What happened with my desktop?
>>
>> First clue: Trinity is using ~/.kde3 rather than ~/.kde. Yet my $KDEHOME
>> environment variable is set to ~/.kde. Hmm. Where is this being ignored
>> or
>> overridden?
>>
>> Yes, I can rename ~/.kde to ~/.kde3. But I should not have to. Trinity
>> should honor my $KDEHOME variable.
>>
>> First suspect: /usr/bin/startkde. I have some proposed patches for
>> startkde, but that can wait for another thread. Nope. Not the culprit
>> because I exited KDE, restored my ~/.kde profile, renamed the new
>> startkde, and restored my old startkde. When I started X, Trinity again
>> created ~/.kde3 and ignored my ~/.kde profile and $KDEHOME variable..
>>
>> What is hard-coded to create and use ~/.kde3? A .desktop file somewhere?

~/.kde3 is set in kstandarddirs.cpp and also in startkde.  startkde now
has a fix to honor the $KDEHOME environment variable, and
kstandarddirs.cpp has always had code to honor it.

>>
>> Been a looooong time since I wandered around with the KDE startup
>> sequence.
>>
>> Second, there are folder icons on the desktop for every directory in the
>> root level. They are not device icons and I don't know how to disable
>> that
>> effect. I also have lost my previous desktop icons.
<snip>

I am looking into this one, which fortunately I am still able to replicate
on the older machine I mentioned earlier.  Something is messed up with the
XDG desktop paths; on my system "kde-config --userpath desktop" returns
"/".

Tim