No folders or icons appear in dolphin when using as root user. Sometimes its handy to load dolphin as root user to make some quick file changes. But without icons or folders, its a bit awkward to navigate. To test: sudo dolphin
Please don't open Dolphin as root, it's not supported. See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152150 *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 152150 ***