kppp exists in two places: - /usr/sbin/kppp (elf) - /usr/bin/kppp (soft link -> /usr/bin/consolehelper) A similar situation involves the kpackage program. I had to copy the elf kppp to /usr/bin and make it suid root in order to be able to connect as an ordinary user.
The installation mode was custom with KDE Desktop. I installed only the core and development libraries for GNOME.
It's not a bug, it's a feature. consolehelper is a wrapper program that lets ordinary users start programs as root under certain circumstances. setuid programs are always security problems.