How to install Google Earth on Debian Wheezy

How to Install Google Earth on Debian Wheezy

14 july 2012 | Classified in: Linux | Tags: Google Earth Debian Wheezy

Here is a quick tutorial to explain how to install Google Earth on Debian Wheezy.

This tutorial can also be used to install Google Earth on Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution, however it has only been tested on Debian Wheezy.

Installing Google Earth in Four easy steps

1) The first step is to install googleearth-package:

sudo apt-get install googleearth-package

2) The second step is to install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install alien lib32nss-mdns libfreeimage3 lsb-core msttcorefonts
pax rpm ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-vera

If you are using the nVidia proprietary driver, you can also install the following package:

sudo apt-get install libgl1-nvidia-glx-ia32

3) The third step is to build a deb package for Google Earth:

make-googleearth-package --force

4) If everything worked as expected, the last step consist of installing the deb package built previously:

sudo dpkg -i googleearth*.deb

Conclusion

Google Earth should now be installed on your system.
The software can simply be launched using the command "googleearth" or via a new icon in the menu.
If something went wrong when you followed the tutorial above, make sure you read the error message carefully and install any missing dependency needed by your package manager.

Video of Google Earth running on Debian Wheezy

3 comments

jeff smith said: #1 [sunday 11 november 2012 at 12:42]

The steps for installing google earth does not work quite right on debian wheezy. Even though the program installs and runs, all I see is a tiny dot in the center where the earth should be. I decided to download the program from their web site and installed it. It too installs and runs, however it does not render any layers, such as roads or even the zoom or direction controls. Looking for an answer on the net hasn't yielded any results related to this. I have been running google earth as long as I can remember and have never had problems like this. This is one of the few unfixed problems I have with debian wheezy. I should mention that I have a 64-bit computer and a newer nvidia card and I did install the 32-bit libs. Please help. Thanks.

jeff smith said: #2 [saturday 01 december 2012 at 16:51]

I used these steps to get it working:
1) Go to http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/i386/libgl1-nvidia-glx/download and retrieve the libgl1-nvidia-glx_304.48-1_i386.deb file.
2) Extract the deb file. I used ark for that.
3) Extract the data.tar.xz file.
4) Copy the usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/nvidia/current/libGL.so.1 file to /opt/google/earth/free/
5) Copy the usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.304.48 file to /opt/google/earth/free/
6) Copy the /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libnvidia-glcore.so.304.48 file to /opt/google/earth/free/
7) Enjoy!

I believe the 32-bit packages are missing these files.