That solution was not immediately obvious. I want my desktop to be a desktop out-of-the box...
It was perfectly usable as a desktop for me, out-of-the-box, with the default configuration. Maybe you used version 4.0 which was really more a tech preview than a release? Because since 4.1, whenever I started it for a new user, it had a "Folder View" widget in the upper left quarter of my screen, behaving like and old-school desktop, leaving space around it for more widgets. I still use exactly this setup on my laptop.
Reminds me of the first time I installed Vista on my computer... I deleted it about 15 minutes after installing it.
I guess I deleted it before I even installed it, after seeing it on another PC
I agree that Kubuntu has a lot of flaws, but I'd really like to stick with a Debian-based KDE distro and couldn't yet find a good alternative, unfortunately.