Comment 9 for bug 757011

I had a similar problem. I launched Emacs from gnome-terminal using "emacs," and then selected "Keep in Launcher." If I closed Emacs, clicking the launcher icon wouldn't open a new instance; it would just flash for a few seconds and then stop. Then, the icon would disappear upon restarting my computer. Opening Emacs from the Applications place and then keeping it in the launcher worked.

Furthermore, launching Emacs from a terminal as "emacs23" and then keeping it in the launcher also worked. Although, I'm not sure if starting it this way recovers the .bashrc environment variables.