kde has a lot of stuff in it, some other desktop environments are smaller and nippier. I think that educating the user to the fact that they can use xfce, or gnome or whatever else, and give them the choice, for whatever things they want to do might be better than just tweaking kde up and pretending it's windows, you know?
after all the numerous different choices of desktops are just one more of the things linux has that macos and windows lack (except i bet macos has something similar now i have said that...), and it should not be swept under the carpet.