Thank you very much for your help, but unfortunately I did not manage to solve this problem. And because I did not really know whether this was actually possible, I took this as the occasion to switch from Kubuntu to OpenSUSE.
So this issue can be seen as "solved". :)

Hi, I received the permissions error when I tried to run the plasmapkg-command in order to install a plasmoid (with sudo, of course). Strangely this has worked out fine a few times before even though I can't remember to have changed any configurations in the mean time.
So I think I actually did not do anything that seemed to me to have something to do with the main error...

Alright, I did it. ;)

My Kubuntu doesn't load the login screen or the graphical interface anymore but stops booting when it prints "Starting TiMidity++ ALSA midi emulation... [ OK ]".

However, I can't tell exactly which action has caused this:
Before some parts of my workspace have crashed and restarted, and afterwards the workspace was rather slow.
Yet before I restarted the system, I've also changed the owner of the folders /var and /etc to root (stupid idea? ^^) in order to fix another problem (message was sth like "... is owned by uid 1000, should be 0").

So I was wondering now, if there's a way to fix this problem without a complete reinstallation.

Thanks in advance and just ask if you think you need to know some more things. :)

Well, I'm using KDE mainly because there's a lot of applications for it that don't have a real Gnome alternative - and also because i find it more stylish.
Yet I can fully understand if people have a different preference. ^^

Thanks for welcoming, anyway. :)

Hey all,

yeah, what should I say? I've been working with Linux for about three years. So I'm not a complete "newbie" (no offense :) ), although I am certainly going to have some questions now and then. And as far as I've read through some postings here, this seems to be some really friendly place for this.

If I find the time, I am writing some things in PHP and for about one week I've been trying to get into developing plasmoids for KDE using Python.

And just in case this matters, currently I am using Kubuntu on my netbook, but for my desktop pc I prefer OpenSUSE (although it's broken at the moment).

- vex7 / David