Applications won't launch

[steamiestoyster]

I've been having problems with 0.7.9 (LXDE and minimal). On minimal I installed ubuntu-desktop and can't get any applications (not even terminal) to launch except Nautilus. When I click on an application, I see the name on the top bar with the spinning loading icon for a few seconds and then it just goes away. On LXDE, some of the applications launch (chromium, Firefox) but a lot still don't.

I suspect this could be a permissions issue.