I use KDE, which has many, many, many buttons and knobs available for tweaking. I use hardly any of them: I can set KDE as I wish in about 2 minutes. I add a "Keep window above others" button to the default minimize-maximize-close set, activate "Focus follows mouse", and swap Ctrl and Caps Lock. I think I also change the task switcher (Alt+Tab thing) to only cycle though not-minimized windows on the current screen.
For everything else (Zsh, SSH, etc), I just carry around my dotfiles. I've done this since about 2002.
If I were setting myself up with a clean KDE environment more than once every 2-3 years, I'd make the small effort to work out which bits of KDE config I need to keep. So far, it's not worth it.
They have barely changed in the last decade. Two key things to be able to work like this were:
* Moving most of my computing to 3 platforms (Emacs, Unix and Firefox). I don't use any GUI application aside from a manual tiling window manager.
* Migrating to a barebones distribution, Arch / NixOS. A small half a page imperative / declarative script is enough to configure all my system.
It's more about personal psychology (willing to stick to something that works and not tinker, or even willing to do with less and not seek improvements all the time), than some technological feat (e.g. achieving some "perfect" config).
I just wanted to draw more attention to this particular snippet. That's a remarkable achievement, and you should be proud of yourself and your working environment.
Regardless that most other people (myself included) are unlikely to be able to replicate what you've done, the reality is you've done it, and it works for you. Good job.