1) I've hope you've heard this before, but avoid running things as root whenever possible. It's difficult to make things truely safe as root (sometimes even with chroot). If you can't run it as non-root, it might be a good idea not to run it at all. Of course, some programs do legitimately need to run as root (but this isn't one)

2) What's the error? If it says "Permission denied", check the file permissions on qtella to make sure it can be executed by all users. If you're starting it from a non-console (such as a menu), try opening a terminal window and entering qtella.