Sorry to hear about your challenges getting it to install. Believe me, I feel your pain. I am windows guy that had spent only a little time with unix. I have spent many hours learning about all the little challenges like repositories (and the ever growing list of them), debs...

Another trick I picked up that may help you figure out why erminig is not loading is to open an X term session and enter "erminig" in there and then tap return. When I do that a bunch of messages fly by and the app loads. If you find an error when doing that it may help you to solve why it is not loading. Once I got all pieces in place I have not had problems with it loading. It does load slowly but it has worked for me.