Install Google Earth on Ubuntu 14.04

Trying to install Google Earth on Ubuntu. You could just download the .deb file and run dpkg command, however I prefer to use it via a repo to make sure upgrades are installed as part of the system upgrades.

http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/

Google Keys

Note: this should not be necessary if you have use the GoogleTalk plugin or similar package from the Google DEB Repo

cd /tmp/
wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
sudo apt-key add linux_signing_key.pub
rm linux_signing_key.pub

Add Google Earth Repo

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list
#add the following line
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install google-earth-stable

NOTE: While this should be enough on 32bit versions of Ubuntu 14.04 unfortunately it turns out that there is a dependency problem with the 64bit version

Fix 64bit dependency issues

sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 lsb-core

The problem is even after the installation of the i368 libraries the .deb file from Google will still not install on 14.04 due to the missing dependency ia32-libs (which was removed). My solution was to download the 64bit .deb file from the link above and extract to a temporary folder and repackage on current system (without ia32-libs). If you find a more efficient way please let me know in the comments.

cd ~/tmp
wget http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb
mkdir google-earth-stable_current_amd64
mkdir google-earth-stable_current_amd64/DEBIAN
dpkg-deb -x google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb google-earth-stable_current_amd64/
dpkg-deb -e google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb google-earth-stable_current_amd64/DEBIAN
dpkg -b google-earth-stable_current_amd64
sudo dpkg -i google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb
rm -rf google-earth-stable_current_amd64*

You should now be able to run

google-earth