On the 12th of this month Google released version 4 of the Google Earth software with support for Linux. It can now be downloaded from here:
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html
The minimum requirements to get it running are pretty reasonable:
* Kernel: 2.4 or later
* glibc: 2.3.2 w/ NPTL or later
* XFree86-4.0 or x.org R6.7 or later
* CPU: Pentium 3, 500Mhz
* System Memory (RAM): 128MB
* Hard Disk: 400MB free space
* Network Speed: 128 Kbits/sec
* Screen: 1024×768, 16 bit color
But you might want to get closer to the recommended specs if you want to run it well:
* Kernel 2.6 or later
* glibc 2.3.5 w/ NPTL or later
* x.org R6.7 or later
* System Memory (RAM): 512MB
* Hard Disk: 2GB free space
* Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
* Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
* Screen: 1280×1024, 32 bit color
And they’ve tested it with Ubuntu 5.10, Suse 10.1, Fedora Core 5, Linspire 5.1, Gentoo 2006.0, Debian 3.1 and Red Hat 9.
Install was a breeze, just download the GoogleEarthLinux.bin, chmod +x it to make it executable and run it. By default it installs to ~/google-earth/ but you have the option to change this during the install.
On my Debian Etch system (2 ghz Pentium 4, 2 gigs RDRAM, 64meg GeForce3 (w/ 3d acceleration), 384/1.5 DSL) it runs flawlessly. Kudos to Google for finally making a Google Earth that I can use.
OK, perhaps you can answer this- why is it that very same people who think browser cookies are evil, and who anonymize their web surfing, and encrypt emails, and rail against invasions of their privacy, think that a tool that lets anyone see their house on the Internet is cool? Man, now I'll have to dress up just to take the garbage out!
Of course there were some of those people who thought google earth was a problem as seen here and articles have been written to dispel the myths about what a cencern it is, like this one.
The images are are generally years old and the quality is not high enough to pick out personal details. And these images have been freely available for years, plugging them into Google Earth is just the latest in a series of applications for them.
I think they're be plenty of noise from even normal people if the images could catch you dashing out to the mailbox in your pajamas.
Privacy concerns aside, I am happy that google is finally paying attention to Linux users.
How do you install Google Earth 4 for Linux.
I need instructons on how to install Google Earth 4 on Fedora Core 5
Google earth used to work in etch (albiet some font missing) but recent upgrades mean it now crashes and shuts down x-server logging me out.