Update: This solution works fine also on Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 if you uncheck the "Compress" box in Tools->Options->3D View (under "Texture Colors"). The new libraries are for Google Earth 7.1.1.1580-0.x86_64 on Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian 7. They fix some problems in Google Earth, among them: 1. The blank Panoramio problem (due to problems in the JS engine in the original libWebkit). 2. Various crashes. The following instructions are intended only for experienced Linux users. Important notes: ---------------- 1. Tested only on qemu-kvm virtual machines running Debian 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 only. 2. WFM. YMMV. 3. Make sure you save a backup of files you change. 4. There is no guarantee of any kind. Use at your own risk. 5. I'm just a user of Google Earth, and I don't represent any organization. amirpli@gmail.com Details on the new libraries are at the end. (These details are not needed for the actual installation.) -- Installation of google-earth: (as root, or prepend sudo to the command) ----------------------------- I used the 7.1.1 64bit deb package I downloaded from Google's download site. It depends on ia32-libs, which caused me installation conflicts on Debian 7 (I did dpkg --add-architecture i386) and a try to install a large amount of 32bit packages on Ubuntu. I don't know why this dependency exists, as google-earth seem to work just fine without ia32-libs. If you don't have ia32-libs already installed and you would like to remove this dependency, here is an easy way: 1. Installation: dpkg -i google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb 2. Remove the ia32-libs dependency: Edit /var/lib/dpkg/status (consider to keep a backup copy): Search for google-earth, remove ia32-libs from the Depends line, save and exit. 3. Complete the installation: apt-get install -f Make sure the libfreeimage3 package exists: ------------------------------------------- apt-get install libfreeimage3 -- Content of the tar file: 1. Updated libraries: libQtCore.so.4, libQtGui.so.4, libQtNetwork.so.4, libQtWebKit.so.4, libqjpeg.so, libqgif.so 2. A new googleearth script. 3. patchlib - To be used only on Debian 7, to patch one of the original libraries. -- Tar file install directions: (as root, or prepend sudo to the command) ---------------------------- 1. Copy the current google-earth files to a new directory: (Leave the original as is for reference. Note that it can get overwritten by a new version, e.g by a manual or automatic update if you don't comment out the google-earth repository in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-earth.list). cd /opt/google/earth cp -a free free.newlibs cd free.newlibs 2. Extract there the new stuff (make sure you are in /opt/google/earth/free.newlibs) supposing the tar is in ~/Downloads: tar xvf ~/Download/ge7.1.1.1580-0.x86_64-new-qt-libs-debian7-ubuntu12.tar.xz # in free.newlibs! 3. Update the link in /usr/bin to point to the new free.newlibs directory: mv /usr/bin/google-earth /usr/bin/google-earth.old ln -s /opt/google/earth/free.newlibs/googleearth /usr/bin/google-earth You may choose to use a new symbolic link, and in that case there is a need to update the desktop item. 4. It you would like that google-earth will use google-chrome as default external browser, edit the new googleearth and uncomment the BROWSER line (from some reason google-earth insists on using firefox even though google-earth is the default one according to "xdg-setting check default-web-browser google-chrome.desktop"). 5. On Debian 7 *only*: there is a library version mismatch in libLeap.so, that prevents also loading another library. I don't know what this problem affects, but due to the exact nature of this particular incompatibility it can be fixed. I included a shell script that I wrote, invoke it as follows: ./patchlib libLeap.so If it succeeds, it should output one line only: 102: 0000000000000000 0 FUNC GLOBAL DEFAULT UND memcpy@GLIBC_2.2.5 (12) To diagnose problems: --------------------- 1. Make sure /usr/bin/google-earth points to the correct directory: ls -l /usr/bin/google-earth (See installation instruction no. 3 above.) 2. Validate that the googleearth program is the new one (it contains the string ge_debug): cd /opt/google/earth/free.newlibs grep ge_debug googleearth 3. Run google-earth in a terminal window, from *your* account (never run it as root). 4. If you ran google-earth by mistake as root, validate that it didn't create anything as root in your home directory (run this check from *your* account): find ~/.config/Google ~/.googleearth -user root This command shouldn't give any output. If it gives, change the owner back as *root* (replace HOME by your home directry path): chown -R YOURACCOUNTNAME HOME/.config/Google HOME/.googleearth -- Workaround for problems that I encountered: ------------------------------------------- 1. On some systems (e.g Fedora or OpenSUSE, google-earth may crash due to some font files in the system. These files should be removed/renamed as a solution (check Google Earth forums if you encounter this problem). There is a workaround (without removing files) that I don't include here because I didn't encounter this problem on Debian/Ubuntu. 2. Bad looks of the GUI theme. You may try the following ways to fix that: A. Install the package qt4-qtconfig, and use the qtconfig command. You may find a need to change the GUI Style to something like Cleanlooks and in the Font tab the style to Regular. You can modify these changes back later if you like. B. If you don't want a global change: Edit the new googleearth and uncomment the style line. Optionally use there another style. On Debian you may get an inconvenient bold font in menus of google-earth, which cannot be modified using qtconfig, apparently due to a bug in it. Can be solved by editing ~/.config/Trolltech.conf (back up the original, just in case), and in the [Qt] section (add such a section if needed) modify the font= line (add if none) to something like: font="Cantarell,11,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0" (In the same occasion I removed the cache sections, that accumulated plenty of lines from all my tries of the fixes.) 3. Panoramio image icons not appearing on the map: clear the cache. 4. Cosmetic fix: Unchecking of "Show web results in external browser" in Tools->Options->General is not preserved: In ~/.config/Google/GoogleEarthPlus.conf, add in the [General] section the following line: EarthBuilderLogin= 5. Not fixed: a crash when trying to select 3D font using Tools->Options->3D View->Choose 3D Font. If needed you may try to change them in GoogleEarthPlus.conf (I didn't try). -- Details on the included libraries --------------------------------- The libraries are from Debian Sid: 1. libqtwebkit4_2.2.1-5_amd64.deb (libQtWebKit.so.4) 2. Source package qt4-x11_4.8.4+dfsg-4 (libQtCore.so.4,libQtGui.so.4,libQtNetwork.so.4,libqjpeg.so,libqgif.so). It was configured with "-arch generic", and qdbusintegrator.cpp was modified to remove "const" from "const QString". I made the recompilation on Debian 7, with options and critical bug fixes merged from qt-4.8.4-17.fc20 of Fedora.