Not everyone, particularly Debian users, wants sudo globally enabled. 
There are numerous kdesu bugs, possibly related. I posted another only 
today.

This issue has been my most major usability annoyance with TDE from the 
beginning and till today was unresolved.

I just found, quite by accident, this one, titled "startkde (starttde) 
needs updating"

http://bugs.trinitydesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=675

The solution (for 3.5.13, in /opt/trinity/bin/startkde) is simply:

112a113,114
 > ### out ##
 >
114,116c116,128
< if [ -z "$KDEROOTHOME" ] && [ "$UID" = "0" ]; then
<   echo "[startkde] User ID is $UID. Setting KDEROOTHOME to $KDEHOME."
<   export KDEROOTHOME=$KDEHOME
---
 > #if [ -z "$KDEROOTHOME" ] && [ "$UID" = "0" ]; then
 > #  echo "[startkde] User ID is $UID. Setting KDEROOTHOME to $KDEHOME."
 > #  export KDEROOTHOME=$KDEHOME
 > #fi
 >
 > ### in ##re: http://bugs.trinitydesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=675
 >
 > # kdesu needs something to find root's TDE profile. Set the 
TDEROOTHOME variable
 > # here as last resort. /root/.trinity is a safe presumption. If an 
admin wants
 > # a different location then set the TDEROOTHOME variable elsewhere.
 > if [ -z "$KDEROOTHOME" ]; then
 >   export KDEROOTHOME=/root/.trinity
 >   echo "startkde: Setting KDEROOTHOME to $KDEROOTHOME."
118a131,134
 >
 > ###################################
 >
 >

I could before not even change the clock without getting root-owned 
files in ~. Now, no more dcopserver crashes. Gksu, sux and su-to-root -C 
work.  I can set a different appearance for root instances of 
kwrite,konq,..

Not fully tested yet but good so far.

If Darryl reads this, thanks enormously.

David