Comment 10 for bug 18451

Basically, the kubuntu-default-settings are applying to any user, including root, as long as personnal settings are not set for that particular user too.

The settings are read and merged between the different config files in that order with that priority :
home folder > kds folder > /usr/share/apps/

As long as you customise either your account or the root one, there is not way to keep the parameters sync except copying ~/.kde too /root.

If you want to get that syncronized, what you can do is a script in /etc/init.d/rcS.d that copies /home/youruser/.kde and /home/youruser/.qt to /root.

There is no other way to make it automatic for us, basically because a system can have more than one user and it doesn't make sense synching the settings between all of them.

Secondly, the thing that makes kdesu doesn't use the gtk-qt-engines plugin is that the only way to get this confiured is with the first login, via the startkde script.

Sudo is using the user profile while kdesu is using the root one, and because there is no way to login as root by default, there is no way to get that gtk-qt-engine thing configured except copying from a configured profile.

I'm affraid there is no way to get that working as you all except, because touching too widely to kdesu implies security issues etc... although I admit that would be nice in that specific case :)

I don't have another option than to reject this, with the hope that maybe kde4 will deal with profiles differently.