Installing Google Earth in 64-bit Ubuntu Linux

Google does provide 32-bit and 64-bit .deb files for installing Google Earth in Ubuntu.  Unfortunately, the 64-bit version does not work in newer (12.04+) versions of Ubuntu.

The solution: run the 32-bit version!

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The Problem

Running Google Earth from the terminal, you will more than likely get something like this:

$ google-earth
[0424/142332:ERROR:net_util.cc(2195)] Not implemented reached in bool net::HaveOnlyLoopbackAddresses()
[0424/142334:ERROR:nss_ocsp.cc(581)] No URLRequestContext for OCSP handler.
Google Earth has caught signal 11.

As it turns out, the 64-bit version of Google Earth relies on ia32-libs, a package that has been deprecated since 11.10; Ubuntu introduced multiarch as a replacement, and Google Earth has not yet caught up.

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The Solution

Uninstall the 64-bit version:

sudo apt-get remove google-earth-stable

Download and install the 32-bit version.  Everything should now work!