thanks for the advice taylor. yeah, it should be taken care of dependencies - I've hesitant to file a bug report though because my system has been hacked quite a bit. It was originally a gnome install, then I tried to remove as much of gnome as possible (didn't like the application clutter) and then I had to reinstall some gnome apps again etc ...
well what do you know, I just tried it again today and it works!
jet