Install Google Earth 6 In Ubuntu / Linux [With Fixes]

Google Earth 6 has been released yesterday (see what's new HERE), however it's quite difficult to install / run it under Linux due to some errors. But here are exact installation instructions which should get Google Earth 6 to install and run in Linux.

Update: this was posted when there were no .deb packages available for Google Earth 6. Now all you have to do is download the .deb from http://www.google.com/earth/index.html.

1. Ubuntu (and other Debian-based Linux distributions):

Before proceeding, make sure you have the Multiverse repository added.

1.1) If you would try install Google Earth 6 without installing the lsb-core package, you would get an error like this when running it:

exec: 50: ./googleearth-bin: not found

Or:

googleearth: command not found

So let's install lsb-core:

sudo apt-get install lsb-core

1.2) Install Google Earth package which will automatically create a Google Earth .deb

32bit:

sudo apt-get install googleearth-package
cd && make-googleearth-package --force

64bit:

sudo apt-get install googleearth-package ia32-libs
cd && make-googleearth-package --force

1.3) The last command above will create a Google Earth .deb file (it's called /googleearth_6.0.0.1735+0.5.7-1_i386.deb on my system) which should be available in your home folder. Install it like you install any other .deb.

Now Google Earth 6 should work.

2. Manual installation (for any Linux distribution, including Ubuntu)

2.1) To get Google Earth 6 to start, you need to install lsb-core. In Ubuntu, install it like this

sudo apt-get install lsb-core

2.2) Download the latest Google Earth 6 (.bin) and place it in your home folder.

2.3) Then run the following commands:

cd
chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin
./GoogleEarthLinux.bin --target /tmp/ge

2.4) At this point, you'll get an error like this:

./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing Google Earth for GNU/Linux 5.1.3533.1731...............................................................
setup.data/setup.xml:1: parser error : Document is empty

^
setup.data/setup.xml:1: parser error : Start tag expected, '<' not found

^
Couldn't load 'setup.data/setup.xml'

But don't worry, we'll fix it using the commands below:

cd /tmp/ge/setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/
mv setup.gtk setup.gtk2
cd /tmp/ge
sudo ./setup.sh

Notes: I've only tested the first method (on 32bit only!), but the second one should work too.


Now, Google, please make your applications work without going through so much trouble!

Thanks to petepetepete and EAGR for the fixes.