Considering the previously mentioned bug: If that background was a personal one and wasn't copied over: NO.
But apparently that's been seen to. 
Which is exactly what I have been asking:
Where does it set "thailand.jpg" as default background (aka sets it as the defined theme background in .e16/e_config--0.0.bg ) and where is the user defined background kept?
- setting it to desktop 0 in desktops.cfg is not how it's done. .... where is the override?
Getting a bit dizzy going through all the scripts you've put in Elive ...... kudos for all the work 
and (thankfully) not too much perl. 
That does more than just remove background settings.
If I'm not wrong it (among others) removes the previous startup-applications.list and empties out ~/.e16/themes/ ..... looks more like a partial hard reconfigure to me.
Not entirely an elegant way to get a theme to set a background. 
Just consider:
No-one (using Elive) has ever seen retrowave startup with the background you intended it to have.
Either they kept their user defined background or see thailand.jpg.
