CentOS

I have been trying the current release, after a period of running happily on CentOS-7.3-1611 and decided to look at KDE, since KDE has served me extremely well on my laptop under another distribution. However, I noticed the initial login screen briefly appears with what I'd loosely describe as an OS/X-like arrangement of icons (see attachment 1), but this arrangement then disappears and I'm left with the plain screen (attachment 2). If I subsequently create icons on the desktop, they appear nothing like the screen shown during startup. Is this to be expected or does my system have deficient graphics?

Thanks

The graphics in your first image aren't icons. They are part of a so-called "spash screen" animation that just tells you that KDE is starting normally. Once the startup process is finished these disappear.

I think it's "working as designed". You can certainly customize your desktop, fonts, and icon set in the KDE system settings, after startup is complete.

Many thanks, it's useful to have confirmation.