I have a version of Inkscape 47 running on Xubuntu (Ubuntu plus xfce) and it seems to be fully functional. I tried copying it to my Slackware 13 partition and by the time I finished moving libraries over to make Inkscape work some other apps would no longer work. I switched to my XP partition and downloaded that version of 47 and it started, but when I went to the place where page dimensions were set the drop down menu where you could set units was both too narrow to be typed in and too close to another glyph to use the drop down menu.
So I have Inkscape 47 on Xubuntu and can play with it. But the failures under XP and Slackware are troubling. Are my bad experiences with Inkscape on Slackware and XP unique?
Yes I know about the available slackbuild package but it doesn't come with the needed libraries either. I hope the stable version has more universality. Perhaps someday a precompiled Linux version with static libraries included could be made. That would be easier for those who don't have Debian or a Debian derivative to install and run.