I install from the repositories and encountered no problems. I have
several Daily Devotionals, including Spurgeon's Morning and Evening,
several Commentaries and translations installed, (including 2 Greek
Testaments which display in very clear Greek characters).

Did you install from the repositories? I used Synaptic. It sounds like
you may have used another, more dangerous method!

The installation walks one through the process of downloading and
installing from a very large selection of Bibles etc. It's all very
easy to follow and automatically sets everything up ready to use. One
little quirk: when reading Spurgeon's Morning and Evening you have to
manually input the current month and date just above the text to
start; from then on you can click on the down arrow to advance to the
next day.

If you have any other issues let me know.