minor installation problem (and workaround) with 0.5.1.g on Linux

I downloaded spe from blender.org for my Linux box (Slackware 10) and when
I tried to untar it I got the following message:

tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
tar: Read 514 bytes from /home/mikes/My Downloads/SPE-0.5.1.g-wx2.4.2.4.-bl2.31.tar.gz
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

I then tried to untar it on my Windows machine using Ultimate Zip and it
worked!  I then copied it to my Linux machine and installed it.  Since I
wanted to use the latest wxGlade (0.3.5.1) and wxPython(2.5.2.8), I went
to the plugins directory and moved the wxGlade subdirectory out of the way
and made wxGlade a symbolic link to my current wxglade installation.

After light testing, I am happy to say that I have no spe related
problems, although I do have an error message on startup: 
"can't open file '/usr/share/mime-info/gimp-1.3.keys'(error 2: No such
file or directory)".  I believe this is a gtk issue.

Mike