Comment 44 for bug 70240

the error message:
The process for the file protocol died unexpectedly
what it should say (at least in my case)
The process has insufficient permissions to write to various files in your home directory

I got the error after installing kate on ubuntu on xp hosted vmware. careful use of chmod resolved the problem completely.
First off, I did a recursive chmod ( chmod -R 0777 ) from the home directory, which totally screwed the install, so you do not want to do that. With trial and error, I got it working trouble free for 2 months now. Here's a sample of before and after perms but there were quite a few more root only access dirs and files that had to be relaxed.

$ diff perms_befor perms_after
6,15c6,12
< 277109 4 drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp
< 277359 0 srwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT5760.slave-socket
< 277538 0 srwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT5786.slave-socket
< 277302 0 srwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT5919.slave-socket
< 277149 0 srwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT7156.slave-socket
---
> 277109 4 drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 Apr 12 23:27 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp
> 277359 0 srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT5760.slave-socket
> 277538 0 srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT5786.slave-socket
> 277302 0 srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT5919.slave-socket
> 277149 0 srwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jan 5 2009 ./.kde/socket-bagvapp/klauncherMT7156.slave-socket