Another thing is that it can be difficult for someone that has never used linux before. So maybe you can lauch automatically some kind of window (something simple) with buttons like "Play BZFlag", "Shutdown", and run a pre-configured server from a list ? (see also TD-Linux's post...
Why not use another windows manager than KDE which takes a lot of the CPU and of the RAM ? I am not against KDE, but it would help for slower computers (after all, is it not called "Anywhere" ?). I think it would be better to keep more RAM for the game when we want to play and/or host for ...