Before I start, I installed this whole OS system, from an iso of the latest Kubuntu release, a few days ago, so I apologise if this problem is too basic.

I installed a large pack of updates from kpackagekit this morning. So far, no issues. I shut off my laptop, leave for the day, and return about an hour ago. I turn on the laptop, everything boots fine. However, when I click on the Kickoff Application Launcher, only "Favorites" and "Leave" have any entries. This means that I cannot access my programs via Kickoff, as everything is just gone.

Yet, when I hit alt+f2 (krunner I think), I can type in the name of a missing program, and it'll run with no issue; this tells me that the programs are still present on my system.

If more information is needed, please let me know.

Okay, after several restarts, everything is magically working again. I'm confused, but pleased that there are no further issues. Sorry to bother everyone.

No problem. Your issue was likely an out of date Sycoca. KDE applications are heavily dependent upon the Sycoca to retrieve information such as the application menu. ( It is used to reduce startup times for applications, and is usually soft rebuilt every login )

It can be fully rebuilt with: kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental