On my actual and virtual systems I have a second KDEDIR directory. For many years I have used this location primarily to patch sloppy *.desktop files that the KDE devs were always too lazy to fix. I also used that second location to solve other KDE issues. Using that second directory allowed me to not worry about changes to various KDE configuration files every time I updated KDE.

Of course, I then set KDEDIRLOCAL and KDEDIRS in my startup scripts.

To eliminate one possible variable in our recent troubleshooting, I unset those two variables in my virtual machine running Trinity. When I did that I saw an error message I have not seen in several years because of my local repairs:

xset:  bad font path element (#79), possible causes are:
    Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
    Directory missing fonts.dir
    Incorrect font server address or syntax

The error message is generated when startkde checks the font directories, specifically the override directories.

For many years this error message puzzled and annoyed many KDE users. Just search the web and see that history.

My location solution is not a global fix. My local solution is to copy some font files to $KDEDIRLOCAL/share/fonts/override and create a respective fonts.dir file.

I would like to see this stupid error message fixed in Trinity --- once and for all. :)