You nailed it. The point of my story was that there may be more going on which isn't evident from this response. I don't agree with what's apparently happened here, but we don't have the whole story, either.
Full disclosure: I have no horse in this race. I use fluxbox and eschew all "desktop environments" on Linux.
Fluxbox is my preferred fallback for the "Shit I Broke KDE" failure mode. It's highly recommended for those who just need to open Chrome and an xterm and don't need anything else fancy.
Full disclosure: I have no horse in this race. I use fluxbox and eschew all "desktop environments" on Linux.