Cannot start Arduino IDE after playing with several versions of it On my Linux Mint 17 Quiana I have manually downloaded and ran several versions of the arduino IDE (1.05 which is in the repo, 1.6.x for some time, now 1.8.3). Things worked like a charm. 

Now I am trying to get the IDE 1.8.5 going, but I cannot get the IDE started. Started means: I download, extract the files to a directory and run the install.sh command such that the desktop icon gets created. This finishe with a success message. Now I am clicking on the desktop icon, but nothing happens.

Need to say that the IDE 1.05 which comes as a package with Qiana works just fine. I have run the install.sh of both to and fro, but only the 1.05 will start properly. I checked on the desktop link, the execution rights, user, group etc. They are all looking fine for 1.8.5 but it wont start. 

I tried to start the 1.85 arduino IDE from the command line - hoping to get some clue from error messages: 

java -DAPP_DIR=/opt/arduino-1.8.5/ Dswing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel processing.app.Base


--> running this it tells me, that the main class cannot be found. 

Any hints where I am going wrong? Are there any config files to be cleared up, paths to be set ...?
You do not need to install Arduino at all. In fact I have never had it work right due to things not being found.

All you need to do is, from a terminal, run the arduino command in the extracted directory:

fred@computer:~/arduino-1.8.5 $ ./arduino


Any errors that then throws will be a clue as to why it doesn't want to work.