Google Earth v.4 comes to Linux

[Osiris]

Some excellent news this morning for all you Linux jockeys - you can now join the rest of the planet in enjoying Google Earth, as the search monolith has just released Version 4 beta of the programme in PC, Mac and Linux flavours.

Version 4 reportedly offers "greater coverage and higher resolution" and comes in French, German, Italian and Spanish variants. We haven't had a chance to give it a run yet, but this early report reckons "the application works relatively well on the Linux platform".


http://www.theregister.com/2006/06/14/google_earth_v4/

 

[The General]

It works, but it runs kinda slow (even with my 7900gt )

And It uses winelib, just like Picasa for Linux.

Kind of a disappointment.

 

[aj2003]

im new to using linux (ubuntu) and want to keep using google earth, so i downloaded this but its a bin file but i dont know how to install it. Any pointers?

 

[Tyler1989]

It's not coded for linux though it's just emulation again.

 

[The General]

To install it, put it on your desktop and open a terminal, do:

sudo sh Desktop/whateverthenameofthefileis.bin

It will run a graphical installer then.

To run Google Earth, just press alt+f2 and type googleearth and press enter.

You will need video acceleration, so If this is a fresh install and its not using video acceleration, Google Earth will be all choppy and crappy looking.

Oh, and incase you don't have the font is asks for, you can just apt-get it.

sudo apt-get install ttf-blah (I forget what font it wants, but just replace blah with what it asks for and it should work.)


One more thing - Typer1989, its not emulation. It uses winelib, nothing is being emulated. And it is coded for Linux, its not like they're just shipping Windows Google Earth with wine, because Windows Google Earth did NOT work in wine, I gave it my best efforts and it would never work. Remember - Wine Is Not an Emulator.

 

[aj2003]

thanks got it installed, but your right it is very very choppy, How do I enable video acceleration? Its on my laptop so its only using the intel 855 graphic chipset. When i installed ubuntu the graphics driver was already there so i thought it was working fine?

Also when you say press alt and f2 then put in googleearth to start it up. I do that and nothing comes up

thanks
anth

 

[The General]

If you're using Gnome, alt+F2 opens a dialog box to run programs. The program is "googleearth," so that should work. I think its in the Gnome menus somewhere, I just never really use those.

As for the video acceleration, I don't know much about the Intel graphics cards, but as far as I know, the drivers are built into to Ubuntu and they should be enabled by default. Maybe the card just isn't that powerful.

It also might be the program, because I have a Geforce 7900GT KO Superclocked and it's a little choppy for my liking. I'm willing to bet that with the actual release (since this is a beta) it will have improved on performance.