In current cauldron, if you right-click on the Device Notifer panel icon, select "Device Notifier Settings", choose Removable Media, and check the "Automount " box, then click "Apply" and "OK", and close the dialog and reopen it, the checkbox is again unset. No error is given. I'm assuming (hoping) that this is what's responsible for the current breakage of automounting in KDE for wine and GNOME apps. I only just found this option, so I have no idea if it was set by default prior to the breakage, but whether it was or not, and whether it is still intended to be on by default, forcing it off would explain the symptoms.
According to this upstream bug, this is linked to *not* specifying "Only automount if previously manually mounted", which I unchecked. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261376
Keywords: (none) => UPSTREAMURL: (none) => https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261376
Actually, I just tested this leaving "only mount..." checked, and it still cleared the automount checkbox.
*** Bug 2219 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This appears to be fixed in current cauldron.
Status: NEW => RESOLVEDResolution: (none) => FIXED