Would somebody who does not use a sudo based distro please test whether this happens on
your system?
1. Start kate as normal user.
2. Start a separate kate session as root using 'tdesu kate'.
Two separate sessions should be open. In the second session you should be able to view the
contents of /root.
If only one session is open then you are experiencing the same problem.
No other app seems affected by this behavior.
Thanks much.
Darrell