Jun
24
Install Google Earth on Ubuntu 8.04
Filed Under Ubuntu
Recently I blogged about installing Adobe Acrobat reader by way of the Medibuntu repository. This got me thinking about some of the other great (albeit non-free) software that is available there. Here I’ll review how to add the Medibuntu repository and then how to install Google Earth!
Configure the Medibuntu Repository
Setting up this third-party repository can be done by way of a few quick commands:
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update
This will add the Medibuntu repository, import the Medibuntu GPG key and make the new packages available.
Install Google Earth
To then install Google Earth simply use:
sudo apt-get install googleearth-4.3
You should now have Google Earth added to your “Applications” menu and, assuming your video card supports the requirements, you’re ready to virtually travel the planet!
One thing that I did find which helped greatly regarding performance was disabling the atmosphere rendering. This can be done via:
View > Atmosphere : uncheck
If, for some reason, Google Earth doesn’t load properly or crashes on your machine you could try to revert to an older package version which seems to have less issues. To do that use:
sudo apt-get install googleearth-4.2
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9 Responses to “Install Google Earth on Ubuntu 8.04”
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I installed Adobe Reader as explained in the previous blog. It worked fine. Thanks
So I tried Google Earth also. It installed all fine. But whenever I try to launch it, it shows its splash screen and then logs me out and throws the login screen. It kills all my present tasks, like Firefox and telnet sessions.
Thanks for the tutorial.
Is there a reason, why the package “googleearth” still contains version 4.2? why not the most recent one?
abisurd:
I had the same problems. However, luckily for me all I had to do was update my NVIDA graphic drivers, and then the problem was fixed. Maybe this will help you.
Hi:
When I enter “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update” I get the following, ”
E: Type ‘ — 11:oo:51–’ is not known on line 1 in source list /etc/apt/source.list.medibuntu.list.
What happened?
santiago
I Failed install google earth, help pls…
————————–
–15:57:06– http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list
=> `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list’
Resolving http://www.medibuntu.org... 87.98.242.110
Connecting to http://www.medibuntu.org|87.98.242.110|:80… failed: Connection timed out.
Retrying.
–16:00:16– http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list
(try: 2) => `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list’
Connecting to http://www.medibuntu.org|87.98.242.110|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 510 Not Extended
16:00:34 ERROR 510: Not Extended.
I managed to get rid of version 4.3 which wouldn’t run and re-install 4.2 which is fine but I can only run it by typing “googleearth” in a terminal. How can I put it in the applications list and/or create a desktop shortcut?
Probably too late, but it’s pretty simple.
To put it into your applications list, right click on your main menu and select ‘Edit Menus’. Go to one of the sub-menus, like Education. Select ‘New Item’ and fill in the following:
Name: Google Earth
Command: googleearth
Click on the launcher icon to select an icon for google earth. There are a number of globe-like icons already on your system, so just use one of those.
Google Earth is now in your main menu. You can copy the launcher to your desktop or panel by dragging it from your main menu to the desired location.
To the author:
Your apturl link is for the googleearth package, but the install instructions say to install googleearth-4.3.