Installing Google Earth on Sid 64 bit.
 

I cannot install Google Earth under Sid at the moment because ia32-libs-gtk depends upon ia32-libs-gtk-i386, which does not exist.
Does anyone know a workaround for this until multilib is finished?
Could I grab the old ia32-libs-gtk files from somewhere and use them somehow, for example?
Edit:
I have since learned that the 32 bit .deb file is the one to install (since Sid is now multilib), but there is a problem with lsb-core:i386 dependency. It would be good to hear from anyone who has managed to get google earth running under 64 bit Sid.

I know this thread is a couple of months old, but if you are still having this issue, try installing the ia32-libs-gtk package from testing/wheezy. I am currently running sid and have testing/wheezy's ia32-libs-gtk installed and everything is working just fine. Also, most of the time when a package cannot be installed in sid due to broken dependencies, you can install the version from testing and it will work. To be able to use apt to install packages from testing, just add a line to /etc/apt/sources.list for testing and then to install the package from testing type, "apt-get install -t testing package" minus the quotation marks of course.

Thanks, that's worked though it has left me with the system complaining about:and running a -f install wants to remove a load of packages including Google Earth.

You should install the google earth amd64 package, not google-earth-stable:i386. Debian may now be multilib, but it's multilib support is still a little flaky and the google earth packages are meant for debian 6, which is not multilib.

Thanks, that works perfectly.
Now I have to work out why my Space Navigator doesn't seem to be recognised by Google Earth...

You're welcome. What's space navigator?

It looks like a large knob but is actually a six degrees of freedom (up/down, left/right, forwards/backwards, pitch, yaw and roll) joystick used to navigate in 3D applications.
http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/spacenavigator.html
I bought it originally when I used Second Life but Google Earth gained support for them under Linux. Oddly though while it works with virtualised Fedora or Ubuntu it doesn't work with real Debian.
It's probably me misspelling a simlink or something though.

Space Navigator is working now too, not sure whether I did something in the wrong order or followed the wrong instructions the first time.
Either way it's great to have Google Earth without having to fire up a virtual machine.

Hi guys, I know this is solved, but I thought I'd ask here since I'm having issues with Google Earth on Sid 64 bit too. I installed ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk, as well as libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386 since at first the program didn't launch and complained that libGL.so.1 was missing (I'm using a nVidia card with the proprietary driver). Well, the problem is that when I launch the program, it doesn't display the Earth in the part of the screen where it's supposed to; everything it displays there is a black area. If I launch it from the terminal, there's no error or any message at all, so I feel like blinded.

For reference, I made a thread some days ago about this issue here, but I haven't found a solution yet.

Any ideas? :)

You could try uninstalling the nvidia-glx package from Sid and using the one from Wheezy instead, if you haven't tried that already. I think that's what I did, but I'll not be able to look for 12 hours or so.

Thanks 273, I'll try it when I have some time and let you know how it went.

Just to be clear I mean by adding the repository and "apt-get install -t testing" to install them rather than using .deb files.
(apologies if it's obvious from above but wanted to make sure)

Yes, I thought that's how it would be done. Thanks for the clarification. I'll post my results later, when I try it.

Well, tried installing the nvidia-glx package from Testing, but didn't work. If I manage to solve this I'll post back.

Thanks for your help!

Sorry, I re-read and I realised I didn't make it clear it's the nvidia-glx-ia32 package from testing. It's the multilib support that's broken in Sid at the moment so some things for i386 need to be from testing.

Thanks! I purged all the nvidia packages from Sid and installed the driver from testing as well as the nvidia-glx-ia32 package. Tried launching GoogleEarth and got the message telling I had no libGL.so.1 on my system (again). So I followed a link in Spanish suggesting to download libGL.so.1 from a launchpad link and copy it to /opt/google/earth/free. I did so, and the program now works with some glitches, but at least it's usable.

Regards.

You should be able to use the driver from Sid, I only use the ia32 packages from testing and everything appears to work.

Copying some random version of a file is not a very good solution. Have you tried installing libgl1-mesa-glx:i386? From this link (http://packages.debian.org/search?su...rds=libGL.so.1) it appears that libGL.so.1 is found in this package.

Alright, I'll upgrade the driver to the one in Sid's repos then. Thanks for the suggestion.


You're right, I don't like to download random files from the net either. I tried some packages containing libGL.so.1 some days ago, but I don't remember if I tried libgl1-mesa-glx:i386. I'll try it when I get home and let you know how it goes. Thanks for your help.

You shouldn't need to manually download any files. Adding testing to your sources.list enables using testing packages from apt-get.

Hi again,

Sorry for the late reply, I've had a busy week and I haven't had the time to tinker with this. I'll try when I have some time and post back.

Thanks for your help folks, it's really appreciated.

A recent dist-upgrade has broken 32 bit support again -- this time the nvidia-related packages.
So, no more Google Earth or Second Life for me for a year or so unless I move to Xubuntu :(.

Well, after some tinkering I finally solved the problem installing libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386. It removed libgl1-nvidia-alternatives-ia32, libgl1-nvidia-glx-ia32 and nvidia-glx-ia32, but solved all the problems I was having with GoogleEarth. Have you tried installing it?

There was an issue with one of the 32 bit packages and it wouldn't install - it has been solved now so all is well again.

Thanks to Odiseo
 

Thanks Odiseo! That has solved my problem as well. I also had to place a link into the google earth folder:

Good, glad it worked for you!

Oops, meant to say it's working again (it was solved a couple of days after my last post to this thread and I thought I'd posted but looks like I didn't). I've not been brave enough to try but Google Earth may now even work in Sid without the Testing libraries.

Note to self: "Running apt-get dist-upgrade then blindly hitting 'y' <enter> is not a good idea."
Broken again by my stupidity. A few times a dist-upgrade has wanted to remove google-earth but I've said "no" and waited and things have been solved so hopefully it'll be the same this time.
All this because Google can't package a 64 bit version and Sid doesn't seem to have multi-arch working yet.
I wonder whether other distros are going through this?

FWIW, I applied my daily upgrades about one hour ago and didn't have any issues, so probably they fixed whatever was causing the removal of Google Earth (on the Debian repos side). Maybe doing a dist-upgrade after refreshing the list of packages, followed by a Google Earth reinstall will fix it for you? (In case you haven't fixed it already).

Thanks, I dist-upgraded a few hours ago ans saw nothing so thought it wasn't yet sorted. However, I just dist-upgraded again to be sure (and just got a bash update) and was able to install ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk (which I hadn't noticed was missing also) without having to use "-t testing" and reinstall google-earth.
So, now to investigate whether I still need the testing repos at all. Or, perhaps, ia32-libs has been removed from Sid entirely now so apt has to grab it from testing.

Edit: Wasn't thinking there, sorry, I think the issue was that one of the dependencies of ia32-libs (libsqlite[something], I think) wasn't present until some point today. So, obviously, my dist-upgrade wouldn't show anything related to the problem since this package had been removed.

I think the Testing repository is not needed anymore, since I don't have it in my sources.list and haven't had issues so far. Also, ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk are on Sid's repository and the versions of these packages I'm using belong to Sid, so probably there's no need to use the ones from Testing anymore:

BTW, I also have ia32-libs-gtk-i386:i386 and ia32-libs-i386:i386. Not sure when I installed them, though; maybe they were autoinstalled by aptitude in any moment.

Yes, it can be removed, thanks again.
I think that ia32-libs-gtk-i386:i386 and ia32-libs-i386:i386 are the actual packages you need and that the problem now is that google-earth-stable depends upon ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk instead. So having the (empty, I think) ia32-libs and ia32-libs gtk present in the repo "tricks" apt into allowing it too be installed.

Today I ran a dist-upgrade that removed (amongst about 25 packages) ia32-libs and googlearth-stable. So, rather than download the .deb and install I decided to do it "the right way" using googleearth-package.
googleearth-package installed fine and make-googleearth-package ran fine too. I then installed the .deb file and, as expected, dpkg complained about a missing ia32-libs. Instead of playing around trying to install anything though I just ran googleearth and, surprisingly, it fired up and worked fine.
So it seems that multilib is working properly now but google, in their wisdom, are still giving ia32-libs (and, I think, ia32-libs-gtk) as a dependency.
Next experiment, when I dare, is to try to install the 32 bit version of Google Earth instead and see whether multilib means it just works.

Haven't tried the make-googleearth-package method in a while. Will give it a try when I'm home again to see how it works. BTW, which version of Google Earth are you using? I tried the latest version a few days ago and it wouldn't launch and gave an error when run from the terminal. I think it was related to 64 bit systems, since some people on other forums where having the same error on 64 bit installs.

Seems I typed too soon. The dependency on ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gkt caused a circular dependency hell which could only be cured by removing googleearth-stable.
Luckily, running the .binfrom Google installed it (well, it can't really fail seeinig as it's just really unzipping things) and since the dependencies are all there in reality the application itself works fine.

Edit: We cross posted -- I have version 6.0.3.2192 installed from the .bin.

Ah, I see. I think I have version 7 installed (I'm not on my computer right now). Will have to find a lower version and see if it works.

If you run make-googleearth-package that's the version it pulls down. so if you can't find the older version dirrectly from Google you can get it that way. Since make-googleearth-package only creates a .deb but doesn't install anything you're safe doing that.
I think that some of the 32 bit GTK packages are absent at the moment because they're lagging behind the AMD64 ones. I have had to manually install a .deb as a (very bad) workaround to get one program working. Whatever is missing isn't needed for Google Earth though.

Thanks, will give it a try when I get home.

BTW, .deb packages can be modified to not check for certain -- or all -- dependencies when being installed. So, if these are not needed you could do without them and the installation wouldn't complain. You can check this thread if you're interested. (Basically, you unpackage the .deb, edit the debian/control file to delete the dependencies you don't need, and repackage it again).

Thanks, I might give that a look. The advantage of using the binary installer is, of course, that dist-upgrades won't remove it but I can anticipate some problems when the libs go missing as they have for the other program I mentioned.
I'm still posting here as I'm trying to find the most reliable way to get google-earth installed on Sid with the least breaks due to upgrades. However, I think the multilib side of things will always cause problems so perhaps there is no "easy way" just a variety of clunky ways...

Well, this morning I decided to try the latest package from Google. I downloaded the "64 bit" package and, as usual, got the dependency problem for ia32-libs. So, I went ahead and modified the .deb to take out the ia32-libs dependency and it installed without complaint and is running fine. So I now have 7.1.1.1580 installed which I think is the latest version. I wonder whether this version will be less crash prone...
I have seen mention in another thread on this site that a true 64 bit Google Earth may be in the pipeline -- it's about time if that's the case!

Edit: It seems I typed too soon once again. When I click on photo's in GE I just see a white popup but no photo. Apparently others are seeing this on the 64 bit version too.

I upgraded to version 7.1.1.1580 to test and had the same issues you describe when loading pictures, so I downgraded to version 6.0.3.2197 again. Would be great if Google released a true 64 bit build; no more funny dependencies and probably no more forced package removals when upgrading our systems.

It looks like the not-quite-working current version is truly 64 bit:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...le-4175463081/

Guess it's a true 64 bits version, then. Hope they fix the photographs issue by the next version (as well as the check for unneeded dependencies, which is a minor and easily fixable issue, but still annoying) :).

It does seem strange having a dependency on ia32-libs when the binaries themselves are 64 bit but, as you say, it can be worked around. I miss the photographs though :(.