Installing Google Earth on Ubuntu

Google Earth doesn't need any introduction. It is one of the most popular products from Google that lets you tour the world virtually to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain etc. It lets you save toured places and share them with others. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Installing Google Earth on Ubuntu is quite easy task. This article discuses how to install Google earth on Ubuntu Linux.

There are two ways to install Google Earth on Ubuntu: By using the Medibuntu repository package or downloading and installing it right from the Google Earth website.

Let’s take a look at how to install Google Earth from the Medibuntu repository.

1. Fire up the terminal and enter the following:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

2. Once the above command completes, enter the following on the terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

Now, we have added the Medibuntu repository and imported the Medibuntu GPG key and have made the new packages available. You are just one step away from installing Google Earth on Ubuntu.

3. Type in the following command in the terminal to install Google Earth on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install googleearth

This will start the installation of Google Earth.

The second way to install Google Earth on Ubuntu is to download Google Earth from the Google Earth Website and install it manually. Once you have downloaded Google Earth, fire up the terminal and navigate to the directory where you have saved Google Earth.

1. Make it executable by typing the following command:

chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin.

2. Once you have made it executable you can run the installer simply by typing the following command:

sudo ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin.

The Google Earth installer will appear where you can choose your own install path or leave it to the default. Click "Begin Install" to start installation of Google Earth. When the installation completes it would display a message saying installation is complete and will also display the path where it was installed into. Click ‘Quit’ to exit the installer. That's it, Google Earth is installed on your Ubuntu desktop.