So, someone in the forum said to fix your problem you just need to sign in as ROOT and then open Konqueror, or Kate, or Nautilus, or Control Center, or Configure Desktop, or . . .

Once when I was a baby penguin I needed to do something that couldn't be done (by me) without logging into GNOME as ROOT (wow! pretty red wallpaper!)...maybe I had to move some files from an old OS/2 Warp disk into my /home directory, I don't remember now...and, I still do not know exactly how it happened [because I was DAMN careful, and stayed ROOT only as long as absolutely necessary--I had been warned about that] but the permissions of and in my home directory got subtly messed up...some things still worked right while I was logged in as me, but some things were very strange--didn't do what was expected, or didn't do anything at all, or threw up mysterious errors..

fortunately, I knew where a bunch of gray haired, old "Big Iron" (IBM "Main Frame") types hung out [in what is left of the now faintly known Byte Magazine's online forum Byte Information Exchange (BIX)] and I explained my baffling woes...

some of the guys knew immediately what to fix and how...told me how and then said these wise words:

- never ever use just   su   to become ROOT, ALWAYS use   su -   (because that gives you ROOT's environment) and,

- never ever sign into any GUI environment as ROOT because the GUI Environment Manager writes all sorts of hidden files all over the place, and if they're owned by ROOT they'll get in your way when you're logged in as yourself. This will be true no matter how careful you think you are, because it's all automagical and behind your back...

I say the words were 'wise' because I've not run again into those extremely baffling problems (in almost ten years) that I see so many new folks grapple with which magically go away when they sign into KDE/Gnome as ROOT, again...that is, they say something like: "XXXXX is broken, but when i log in as root it works fine. What do I do?" or "I can log in as root, but not myself, why?" and the first part of the answer should be: Do not log into KDE/Gnome/etc as root, ever!

SO, how do we get done what must be done as ROOT, and follow those "wise words"??