I got it to work!! But I needed to build Arduino from git. I followed these instructions:
http://code.google.com/p/arduino/wiki/BuildingArduino
It's a small pain but if you follow the instructions it should work.
I made the mistake of building it as root. Then I needed to change ownerships and permissions but that's not hard. I then wrote a very small script to have something to start arduino without having to do all the cd to build and run ant. It now works fine.
Go for it, it's easy.
Oh but now it's not in the mint database of programs so you have to build it from git if you want to upgrade it some day. I am putting the web page in the directory so I have a copy on hand at all times.
Told you I would post how to get it to work 8) XD 8) 