Short version:
Google now offers a *.deb. Download the *.deb from Google.
Install it from the command line with
sudo gdebi [filename].deb.
You may need to install gdebi with Synaptic or apt-get--I don't think it was default in my Ubuntu, but I've customized the heck out of this box over the past two and a half years.
I encountered a problem getting it to work properly; it ran for root but not for user. If you run into this, you can read about it in this thread. It turned out to be a permissions problem.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...laptop-835025/
installing googleearth in to ubuntu
