I'm using Debian Mint but all of this should also apply for Ubuntu and maybe even Mac OS X.
In my case i was installing QTodoTxt but the same debugging, and potentially solution, should apply to any application. They had a .deb package which i used to install it, and i was delighted— I wouldn't have to worry about handling dependencies myself. Indeed, it installed successfully and showed up with a nice icon in my application launcher. And launching it... did nothing.
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