In case this is of interest to anyone
else.
Recently I had upgraded to Kubuntu 14.04. After that I found that
Audacity wouldn't open many audio file types like it would before
the upgrade. Today I took the deb file from the Kubuntu 13.10
live disc and put them in the desktop folder on this beast. Then
I opened a terminal window in my home directory and entered :
dpkg -R --install Desktop
I then started Audacity and it worked normally.
--
"I get my copy of the daily paper, look at the obituaries page, and if I’m not there, I carry on as usual."
Patrick Moore