Browsing our interested file under Linux KDE environment from many professional software, including the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) or Qtiplot, could encounter a headache problem. It always shows an empty directory for us even we know there are many documents under certain directory. Many users think this is due to the missing system libraries and they try to solve this problem by installing various unnecessary dependencies.  

Recently I found that this is simply a visualization issue of KDE. The dialog window gets stuck because the left-hand panel has been set to 100%, so that the right-hand pane (which shows the files) is not visible.  

The solution is now quite straightforward: drag the separator between the two panels to the left, in order to make the other panel visible.