I think forcing a user to enter an administrator password would work well. It
probably should be used carefully though. You don't want to disable a
non-privledged users ability to add a printer or do other essential tasks.
Maybe have an option on the main panel that said "customize" where if you
right clicked this button it would pop up an administrator screen/password
prompt. At which point everything would be customizable. Then you could drag
the main panel, remove it, etc. After 5 or 10 minutes the customizations
would be set in stone. Thus preventing accidental changes.
The back to defaults is probably a good idea too as an added option.
Have you thought of maybe working with Cinnamon, Mate, or one of the other
projects? It definitely seems that we are duplicating a lot of work.
Particularly when it comes to offshoots of projects which have paid
developers. By that I mean GNOME developers are getting paid (a lot- not all)
by Redhat, Unity developers are getting paid by Canonical (again a lot- not
all), and KDE developers are getting paid by hmm (well- they were at one
time!).
