OK I got this to work on Ubuntu 12.10 64bit.
1. download the dropbox link
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2183775/kobo-desktop.deb
2. get this file
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/911281....10.1_i386.deb
3. install both debs (plus any other dependancies, see previous posts for libzip and others)
4. Kobo 3.04 linux version runs