How to install Google Earth for Linux

Google Earth for Linux has finally arrived. The detailed instructions are found next.

Google Earth for Linux

macewan@cole:~$ wget http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthLinux.bin
–21:09:09– http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthLinux.bin
=> `GoogleEarthLinux.bin’
Resolving dl.google.com… 64.233.179.93, 64.233.179.91
Connecting to dl.google.com|64.233.179.93|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 17,077,661 (16M) [application/octet-stream]
Buy Holiday Gifts at Shoes.com

100%[===================================>] 17,077,661 287.31K/s ETA 00:00

21:10:07 (285.54 KB/s) - `GoogleEarthLinux.bin’ saved [17077661/17077661]

macewan@cole:~$ chmod +x G*.bin
macewan@cole:~$ ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
Verifying archive integrity… All good.
Uncompressing Google Earth for GNU/Linux 4.0.1563…………………………………………………………
Installing mimetypes…
Running /usr/bin/update-mime-database /home/macewan/.local/share/mime
***
* Updating MIME database in /home/macewan/.local/share/mime…
Wrote 3 strings at 20 - 88
Wrote aliases at 88 - 8c
Wrote parents at 8c - 90
Wrote literal globs at 90 - 94
Wrote suffix globs at 94 - 11c
Wrote full globs at 11c - 120
Wrote magic at 120 - 12c
Wrote namespace list at 12c - 130
***
Installing desktop menu entries…

Hats off to Ryan Gordon of icculus.org for this wonderful port of Google Earth for Linux.

First screen shot I noticed was from aptget @ digg & then xfceslacker a moment later brought it to my attention.

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • del.icio.us
  • Bumpzee
  • Twitter
  • bodytext
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Reddit
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • Fark
  • Furl
  • Live
  • Ma.gnolia
  • description
  • Pownce
  • Slashdot
Posted in How To's at June 12th, 2006. Trackback URI: trackback
Tags: ,

78 Responses to “How to install Google Earth for Linux”

  1. June 22nd, 2006 at 9:49 am #Ricky

    Hey! Didn’t know how to do it, so THANKS for the howto!

  2. June 23rd, 2006 at 10:54 am #Romeo

    Yea same thing for me , i didn’t know how to install it !
    THANKS!

    I’m running ubuntu 6.06 !

    THANKS AGAIN and Long Live For LINUX!

  3. June 24th, 2006 at 11:56 pm #Silent Walker

    Thanks for the howto. Really great product from google.Will try.

  4. June 25th, 2006 at 8:33 pm #Kevin Anderson

    Thanks heaps for that. Now all my problems are solved. Great product. I’m running FC5.

  5. July 11th, 2006 at 5:07 am #Walt

    Many thanks for the howto. It works fine with SuSE linux 9.3

  6. July 14th, 2006 at 8:20 pm #Salvador Banuelos

    Thanks for the great advice, it works perfect with Ubuntu 5.10
    My Box:
    Thinkpad T22 384 RAM
    20 Gb HD
    Pentium III 896 Mhz

  7. July 20th, 2006 at 11:48 am #Riberto

    Thanks a lot! Your instructions were right on the MONEY! This Linux Newbie was able to follow them and
    install it on my laptop runing SUsE 10.1

    THANKS A BUNCH!!!

  8. July 29th, 2006 at 4:02 am #Michael

    Thanks for that. It NEARLY worked, except that even logged on as su and doing ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin I get permission denied. What is the matter?

  9. August 1st, 2006 at 9:47 pm #Jack

    Woohoo! Works great, thanks a bunch!

    Ubuntu 6.06

    1.4 gHz

    aprx. 300 mb. ram

  10. August 3rd, 2006 at 5:19 am #Michael

    Thank you all. OK, I have a desktop icon but when I open it I have a series of packages in michael/home etc but which one is the MAJOR one? I admit that I am an old fool, but this is frustrating. I must have tried everything but the right thing. Help appreciated. Sorry my friends. Mike.

    Mike,

    Don’t forget to do these:

    macewan@cole:~$ chmod +x G*.bin
    macewan@cole:~$ ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin

  11. August 8th, 2006 at 10:38 am #Alex

    This has helped me a lot, thank you!!!

  12. August 15th, 2006 at 10:36 am #Erkki Kaila

    Hi!

    Excellent advice, excellent product!
    UBUNTU, way to go!

    EKa

  13. August 16th, 2006 at 11:14 am #chosaq » 14 days of Ubuntu

    [...] Google Earth instructions on this page. If it doesn’t work (it didn’t for me), install Aiglx+Compiz (see below) and try again. [...]

  14. August 19th, 2006 at 9:06 am #Pepo

    Thanks,

    The “chmod +x” was the part I needed. After that is was just click, click, go.

    Running OpenSUSE 10 on ASUS L3500H Notebook

  15. August 19th, 2006 at 8:44 pm #Keith Rudder

    Thanks!!

  16. August 31st, 2006 at 11:36 am #Martin

    Well,
    As a beginner in Linux I feel really lucky about this article.
    Thanks!

  17. August 31st, 2006 at 6:29 pm #Fuji

    i have problems during installation googleearth in linux…this is error report from my computer.

    user@linux:~> chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin
    user@linux:~> ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
    Verifying archive integrity…Error in MD5 checksums: 5b4327f9ca55dab1b53ac9afa81391ae is different from dea81c5bb266fcfd920208ab0d8b727e
    user@linux:~>

    so..you can help me to avoid this problems ?
    please expalin me in step by step
    thx.

    \Please send ur answer to my email adress in puji.adiatna@yahoo.co.id

    [edit] Fuji, I just tested it again on a clean Ubuntu Dapper install and it works fine. Just follow the instructions again

  18. September 1st, 2006 at 12:22 pm #Andrej Rados

    Fantastically beatutiful way to install. Thank you!

  19. September 3rd, 2006 at 6:39 pm #DD

    Installed just peachy thanks to the great directions, but when I try to run it, I get:

    Installing desktop menu entries…
    Xlib: extension “XFree86-DRI” missing on display “:0.0″.

    It then hangs forever attempting to start.

    Anyone know what I can do about this missing extension?

    FWIW, I’m running SLED 10 on a Thinkpad T42.

  20. September 13th, 2006 at 12:00 pm #wombat

    the only way to install. apt-get didn’t work. It tooks five minutes and googleearh was runing fine.
    thanxs mate

  21. September 23rd, 2006 at 2:48 pm #Fiapo

    It worked perfect!!!
    Thank you !
    :)

  22. September 24th, 2006 at 12:19 pm #JuanCamilo

    Thank a lot, worked perfect.
    that’s what linux needs…win applicantions…

  23. October 23rd, 2006 at 12:58 pm #Camdog

    Same Here! Big thanks :)

  24. October 29th, 2006 at 12:30 pm #kal

    I can’t use that terminal app am new to Linux ubuntu 6.10…I have just used linux for less than a week and am struggling to get my feet wet…lol

  25. November 4th, 2006 at 9:42 pm #Erik

    What do you mean you can’t use the app?

    In Ubuntu: Applications > Accessories > Terminal

    Viola!

  26. November 11th, 2006 at 8:44 am #Xrzyhoo

    Not workin in Ubunto 6.10 :( I installed like you wrote but when I run application then I have screen Google Earth and initializing… and nothing… waiting and waiting and nothing :( ehhh Linux is better that Windows? I really doubt :(

  27. November 14th, 2006 at 6:17 am #panos

    i get this error

    Uncompressing Google Earth for GNU/Linux 4.0.2414…………………………………………………………
    setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/setup.gtk2: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    Xlib: connection to “:0.0″ refused by server
    Xlib: No protocol specified

    can someone help me ?
    Please email me at sleepinsnack@yahoo.gr

  28. November 23rd, 2006 at 9:47 pm #alki

    It installs fine, but I can’t get it to run. The Google Earth splash comes up for a couple of seconds, then it disappears. The program never loads.

  29. November 27th, 2006 at 1:40 am #vimi

    am not able to install it,but i already have the firefox….a headache!!!!

  30. November 28th, 2006 at 1:30 pm #Joe Rella

    Michael Says:
    July 29th, 2006 at 4:02 am
    Thanks for that. It NEARLY worked, except that even logged on as su and doing ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin I get permission denied. What is the matter?

    instead of just typing “./GoogleEarthLinux.bin” try typing “bash GoogleEarthLinux.bin” from the directory where the file is.

    ** did you first:

    chmod +x G*.bin

  31. December 2nd, 2006 at 9:45 pm #Fred Miranda

    I’m trying to install it on Yellow Dog Linux. It downloads fine but it stops after the following:
    Uncompressing Google Earth for GNU/Linux 4.0.2414…………………………………………………………
    After that I get:
    [root@localhost ~]#

    What happened? Why doesn’t it complete the installation? Any tips appreciated. Do I need to install something else first?
    Thanks!

  32. December 3rd, 2006 at 2:24 am #Ronald

    In reply to #26: check this (rather brilliant) post: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/683543/page//vc/1

    Problem is that the Ati 2.28 & up drivers are incompatible with GE (v4). Either downgrade your ati-driver or copy an pre-2.28 libGL.so.1.2 to /usr/local/googleearth/libGL.so.1 (note the renaming!)

  33. December 8th, 2006 at 7:10 am #Michael

    Hi Rob, again. You seem to know what you’re doing. I’m new to Linux, and your tutorial about GoogleEarth worked perfectly. Ok, I’m trying to learn how to use console.On one hand, I can and have downloaded Scribus 1.2.5 tar bz2 and have had no luck getting it up and running. I don’t mind downloading it again, so, if you can, please post a console scenario where I can do it just like google-earth. I’ve had a go at it but don’t know where to put the dots, dashes and spaces enough to make it work. Merry Christmas, Michael!

  34. December 25th, 2006 at 7:48 am #chandrakant

    not special

  35. January 2nd, 2007 at 3:01 pm #Alan Levin

    Useful information, helped and worked! thanks to all involved…

  36. January 19th, 2007 at 12:54 pm #Jason

    Great! Right to the point! thanks for sharing.

  37. January 23rd, 2007 at 2:22 am #Argiris Hatziemmanouil

    Great! Thank you very much!

  38. February 7th, 2007 at 9:50 am #despina

    the howto-install-guidance very useful, it was installed alright on fedora core 6. When I run “googleearth” a window appears on the screen, saying the following
    [...] You are currently running Google Earth in ‘OpenGL’ with software emulation. In this mode Google Earth will work but it will run very slowly. If you want to run Google Earth more quickly we suggest that you upgrade your graphics card driver. We only recommend this if you are comfortable doing software upgrades [...]
    I intend to search about this, but I am kind of new on such things, so if anybody has a better and safer idea, i would be grateful if you let know.

  39. February 11th, 2007 at 4:51 am #AlexAv

    Really great hope theres more people like you for explain me another things about ubuntu

  40. February 11th, 2007 at 3:07 pm #Shuggie

    Oh so close yet so far. Ubuntu 6.10 Doesnt like it. Im running an acer aspire 5510. Like the other post above i get the splash screen and initializing but nothing further. Im a complete newbie to Linux so need spoon fed at this point.

  41. February 16th, 2007 at 12:23 am #vivek

    Great Thanks

  42. February 16th, 2007 at 12:25 am #vivek

    Great Information !!!!!!!!!
    Thanks

  43. February 16th, 2007 at 3:01 am #David Mackie

    Many thanks. I had tried and failed to do this installation - but now it’s fine. Great stuff !

  44. February 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm #jason

    thanks

  45. March 4th, 2007 at 10:44 pm #liberty

  46. March 14th, 2007 at 7:06 am #Samuel213

    I tried it on OpenSuse10.2 and it worked great….
    One more good reason to keep on working with Linux for a almost-newbie like me.
    (I had to do the steps on the shell as normal user, not as superuser)
    Thanks a lot for that very useful help!!

  47. March 17th, 2007 at 6:37 am #Michael

    Recently I switched from Xandros 3.02 to Ubuntu 6.10. There were some difficulties at first with all sorts of stuff like Bluetooth and a lot of fiddling around.
    Shuggie, I had early dramas with GE as well, even with Rob’s tuturial as you can tell by my previous posts. I actually DIDN’T KNOW(I’m getting on a bit) about copying and pasting into Terminal. So I typed my tits off making all sorts of errors!
    Anyway, I’m using U6.10 on a Celeron 1.7 PC. This time, I just ran it copy/paste and it worked like a dream. Perfect install,GE icon on taskbar etc. Well, I had to do that bit …
    I’ve noticed on UbuntuForums some issues with certain laptops with Edgy, which may or may not have something to do with the problem you have(had?) By the way, the GE I just downloaded and installed was 20-odd megs rather than 17+.It’s taken me some months to figure out how to do this stuff on Linux. Have fun, Shuggie. It will all work out in the end. Cheers, Mike.

  48. May 28th, 2007 at 1:05 am #ras

    It’s great!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    thanks——–

  49. July 20th, 2007 at 11:16 am #Seth

    A noob might understand that stuff up there, but I’m only a beginner. I tried pasting lots of stuff up ther into terminal. I gpt nothing but error messages. Despite not knowing how to “do” the lines up there (whatever that means), I installed it like this:

    1. right click on downloaded binary
    2. select “properties”
    3. select “permissions”
    4. check “make executable” box
    5. select “ok”
    6. click on the now executable binary

    Too bad all linux software isn’t this easy to install.

  50. July 31st, 2007 at 5:08 am #roxy

    i think the google earth is fantastic but very blur and there is no bukit batok in the picture.

  51. August 31st, 2007 at 3:43 pm #Randy

    I get the following error.
    wget http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthLinux.bin
    Opensuse 10.2
    any ideas?

  52. August 31st, 2007 at 3:54 pm #Randy

    Opensuse 10.2
    I get the following error.
    Xlib: etension “XFree86-DRI” missing on display “:0.0″.
    any ideas?

  53. August 31st, 2007 at 4:00 pm #macewan

    @Randy,

    That is not an error and the link is still valid. Try it again.

  54. August 31st, 2007 at 5:40 pm #Randy

    macewan,
    note: 52 is the issue.
    51 was an accident.

  55. September 2nd, 2007 at 7:31 am #sairin

    although i installed it everytime i try to run it the pc logs me off from my linux account and when i log back in nothing happens..

  56. September 27th, 2007 at 8:14 pm #cturk

    It didn’t work for me!! I got this:

    ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ wget http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthLinux.bin
    –21:13:24– http://dl.google.com/earth/GE4/GoogleEarthLinux.bin
    => `GoogleEarthLinux.bin’
    Resolving dl.google.com… 66.102.1.91
    Connecting to dl.google.com|66.102.1.91|:80… connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 404 Not Found
    21:13:24 ERROR 404: Not Found.

    uh help?

  57. October 14th, 2007 at 6:09 am #toedipper

    Hi all,

    As a work around to the 404 error just download the file manually from the Google site http://earth.google.com/tour/thanks-linux4.html and then open a terminal in the location you save it and start at step 2 above, the chmod step, and continue on from there.

    The first step wget is just is just a download command but google have changed the location which is why there is a 404 error.

    Worked for me.

    toe

    http://www.vistaisrubbish.com

  58. November 30th, 2007 at 6:38 pm #Mario

    thanks for posting the commands to install. I had a heck of a time running the .bin file after downloading from google

  59. March 18th, 2008 at 3:50 pm #Nigel

    Hi
    I am trying to install Google Earth on Fedora 8 but when I compile I get the following Error:-
    setup.data/bin/Linux/amd64/setup.gtk2: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    setup.data/bin/Linux/amd64/setup.gtk: error while loading shared libraries: libXi.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
    The setup program seems to have failed on amd64

    Fatal error, installer failed to run at all!
    I would be grateful for any help…Nigel

  60. April 25th, 2008 at 2:49 pm #carux

    Thanks, worked perfect

  61. May 20th, 2008 at 6:48 am #Parshwa Murdia

    I am not able to install the Google Earth for the Linux I am using in my machine. Pleae let me know what to do? Though it gets downloaded but is not getting installed. Is there any package which is not yet installed in my PC or anything new is to be done, please let me know regarding the same. I am using the Linux with the Fedora Core 5. And also if possible, please let me know how to upgrade from the internet and update for the latest things and the softwares. Not only this but I am also not able to use some of the common softwares, so please help rectify the same.

  62. May 24th, 2008 at 3:30 pm #djole_nisam_ja

    Great stuff.

    Thanks man

  63. May 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm #Jorge

    THANX MAN!! You saved me! =D, the only thing that you have to change now is the URL…

    http://dl.google.com/earth/client/GE4/release_4_2/GoogleEarthLinux.bin

  64. June 1st, 2008 at 9:05 am #Prom Dresses Emo Fashion Prom Dress

    Prom Dresses Emo Fashion Prom Dress…

    I didn’t agree with you first, but last paragraph makes sense for me…

  65. June 3rd, 2008 at 2:11 am #Anne

    Anne…

    I love your site. They really look very nice. The articles provided are long enough to provide great content but not so long as to be totally engrossing, if you know what I mean….

  66. June 3rd, 2008 at 5:28 am #Cpa Accounting Cpa Firm Accountant Bookkeeping Tax Affiliate Marketing Promotion Site Web

    Cpa Accounting Cpa Firm Accountant Bookkeeping Tax Affiliate Marketing Promotion Site Web…

    I didn’t agree with you first, but last paragraph makes sense for me…

  67. June 6th, 2008 at 7:12 pm #evista

    evista…

    soma…

  68. June 8th, 2008 at 9:22 pm #ecommerce affiliate program

    ecommerce affiliate program…

    As a result, TrackBack spam filters similar to those implemented against comment spam now exist in many weblog publishing systems….

  69. June 9th, 2008 at 3:55 pm #Ecommerce Michigan Ecommerce Base Business Home Online Opportunity

    Ecommerce Michigan Ecommerce Base Business Home Online Opportunity…

    I didn’t agree with you first, but last paragraph makes sense for me…

  70. June 9th, 2008 at 5:57 pm #484da72f9c

    484da72f9c…

    484da72f9c…

  71. July 5th, 2008 at 10:16 pm #agblat

    Great install info, Google boots up and then a black screen with a few lines of text that flash too quickly to be captured followed by a login window. Running Ubuntu 8 on P-IV on ASUS MB.

  72. August 7th, 2008 at 3:28 am #eight

    after the whole uncompressing google earth for gnu/linux andthe ………………….. it went back to [eight@localhost ~]$ instead of installing whatever?

  73. August 14th, 2008 at 4:56 pm #napster

    Hi! I have a Acer Aspire One, and the GoogleEarth does not work, it starts but soon closing. Is this about the RAM?

    I downloaded and used this guide…
    It should work, but doesnt…

    Stats…
    Intel Atom 1,6 ghz
    512mb RAM
    8 gb flash drive

    . Napster .

  74. August 21st, 2008 at 12:33 am #Yawar Hadi Noshahi

    google isntalled correctly but when i run it its too slow….to move the worldmap.and point to the specified location .the message apper on terminal is
    Installing mimetypes…
    Installing desktop menu entries…
    Installing desktop icon…
    do_wait: drmWaitVBlank returned -1, IRQs don’t seem to be working correctly.
    Try running with LIBGL_THROTTLE_REFRESH and LIBL_SYNC_REFRESH unset.

    hope any body deal with it.

  75. September 12th, 2008 at 3:06 pm #joselyn

    this is awesome you can see many things that you dont no visit google earth

  76. September 21st, 2008 at 1:48 pm #Mel

    Newbie Linux user needs help please! Followed the steps, followed intructions on screen, got icon on desktop, promped to type in ‘google earth’ to run program, nothing happened……

  77. September 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm #Mel

    Newbie needs help….. Can anyone tell me what to do now?

    [mel@localhost ~]$ ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
    Verifying archive integrity… All good.
    Uncompressing Google Earth for GNU/Linux 4.3.7284.3916……………………………………………………..
    loki_setup: Suspect size value for option option

    loki_setup: Suspect size value for option option

    Installing mimetypes…
    Installing desktop menu entries…
    Installing desktop icon…
    ./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: ./libminizip.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied
    [mel@localhost ~]$

  78. October 8th, 2008 at 12:12 am #Prozzaks

    I installed Kubuntu 8.04 on my Aspire One AOA150-1493 (120 GB HD version). Then I tried Google Earth. It’s so slow it’s totally useless! It takes at least 1 minute before you get the main windows and expect to wait at least 5 minutes before the initial turn zoom animation.

    I don’t understand why this is so slow. I would expect the Atom 1.6 GHz and the Intel 945GME to pack enough punch to run this, but it’s simply useless as it is.

    I’d like to test the speed of Google Earth on the Aspire One running Windows XP, but I flushed it to install Linux and it would be way to painful to re-install it just for a test.

    I’m now searching for good alternatives for Linux, but I think I’m pretty far from the kind of solution I’m looking for. Basically, what I want is an off-line (or with some kind of off-line cache) tool to see the topography, satellite imagery, street maps that also enable geo-referenced place marks, is able to calculate paths (directions from point A to point B), and can potentially handle a GPS.

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>