I've been using the same home folder for years, and as of the 2nd last upgrade 2 or 3 weeks ago, the system settings have stopped working. When I create a new user, I see that things work properly and look knew and refreshed. I would like to delete the files that I have altered over time and have become unresponsive, while maintaining my data and app config files. I have tried renaming (.bak) my .config, and as well .kde/share/config but apparently not the solution. It would be nice to get my screen edges and stuff back, and as well update to the new look. Any thoughts appreciated.
My advise and highly recommend --- Start From Scratch
Yes, sucks monkeys, but, should be good for future for awhile (maybe/maybe not)
You have years of that home folder (kde4) you say, well kf5 is new, no time like the present to begin new, things are bound to break now/soon/later
This and other things are the very reason I never keep a separate /home. It's too easy, less time consuming to just backup my important configs, etc, to another drive, ftp, cloud and not to ever deal with transitions/change/whatever.
You could also start new, slowly one by one stick configs in your new from old, time consuming, but, you might find the problem
You can also wait for someone else to chime in and give advise
Using kuser or however you like, I would delete your user, including his home directory (after backing up any needed files), then make the user again. If your system is fully updated with plasma-desktop, you should get a clean user folder and then you can proceed from there to customize it.
Thanks piper and dibl for your thoughts. When I purchase a new computer later this year I will be looking at piper's thought of no separate home partition, but for the time being I think I will follow dibl's suggestions somewhat by removing user cliff, and then renaming the home folder to media or data. Then adduser cliff and pull in a new and clean profile. Change permissions on the renamed home folder to cliff/cliff so that I am able to access it be it to copy gpg keys or whatever to the new cliff, and still access the media I have on the renamed folder. Thanks for your time guys and let me know if you see a problem here.