Being one of the people who kept sending intermittent emails to Google about why there is no GNU/Linux version of their popular Google Earth client, I was overjoyed when finally a GNU/Linux version of it was released by Google several days ago. Now I won’t feel lost when ‘Windows guys’ keep talking about what they have found with Google Earth.

It is a 16MB binary download(native binary executable, unlike Picasa For Linux which needs Wine software to execute it) and installs in any directory specified by the user. I was wondering if it will ask for the root privileges and will mess up with my Gentoo install system but thankfully it installed everything within ‘google-earth’ directory in my home directory. Download the binary file from Google Earth website and run it:

sh# chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin
sh# ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin

A GUI window will popup and ask for the directory in which the client should be installed.

Google Earth Install Dialog Box

After clicking the ‘Begin Install’ button, the application is installed in the specified directory.

Google Earth Getting Installed

Upon completion, the installer will offer to start the application.

Google Earth Installed

You can start the application any time by running the ‘googleearth’ executable from the shell:

sh# $HOME/google-earth/googleearth &

Google Earth Splash Screen

(The warning is about the emulation of OpenGL in software. If you use a good graphics card then you can consider updating the current drivers so that googleearth can run more efficiently. More information in Google Help Center.)

Add ‘google-earth’ directory(or wherever you installed it) to the path in the profile file to use a simple command to run it. Add this to .bash_profile in your home directory:

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/google-earth

Now you can start Google Earth client by running:

sh# googleearth &

Google Earth Showing Norfolk

Hoping for more and more Google services being accessible from GNU/Linux operating system.