[How To] Make Google Earth 6.2 Look ‘Native’ in Ubuntu

By Joey Sneddon, Published January 31, 2012

Earlier today we posted a short guide on fixing Google Earth’s infamous ‘ugly fonts’ issue when running under Ubuntu.

In the comments to that post a reader, Daniele80, pointed us in the direction of a hack that enables Google Earth to look ‘native’ under Ubuntu.

Be warned: the following guide isn’t for the fainthearted or the inexperienced. If things go wrong just reinstall Google Earth using the .Deb installer from Google’s website and start again.

With caution out of the ~~window~~ way, let’s begin…

Open A Root Window

First we need to open up Nautilus as root so that we can edit and delete system files. Hit Alt+F2 (or open a Terminal) and enter the following command:

gksu nautilus /opt/google/earth/free

Remove Files

To get Google Earth to look less like a recycled Windows 95 app we need to get it to use libraries on our system rather than those bundled with it.

To do this we you need to delete the following files ONLY:

libcurl.so.4
libGLU.so.1
libnss_mdns4_minimal.so.2
libQtCore.so.4
libQtGui.so.4
libQtNetwork.so.4
libQtWebKit.so.4

Edit The Launcher

Next, right click on the file called ‘googleearth‘ and choose ‘Edit/Open in Gedit’.

Add the line:

export LD_PRELOAD=libfreeimage.so.3

before the final line in the file and hit ‘Save’.

Gedit

Add Required File

Lastly download the following ‘missing’ file and place it in the /opt/google/earth/free folder.

Download libfreeimage.so.3

64bit users will also need to download and place the file below in the /opt/google/earth/free folder.

Download libphonon.so.4

Native Google Earth on Linux

All that’s left to do is open up Google Earth and marvel at the difference between its stock look and that you’ve enabled.

Troubleshooting

Nothing working afterwards? You probably need a few extra packages. Open a terminal and enter the following: -

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libqtwebkit4

groups.google.com via Daniele80

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Anonymous
Now if it would also use the global menu… it is qt, isn’t it?
https://launchpad.net/~exeleration-g Exeleration-G
This is nice. It’d be nice if the Google folks would know about this, maybe they could re-pack Google Earth so it looks like this by default.

http://twitter.com/Azthma Azthma
repackaging it is the way to go. One has to file a bug and mention these modifications. Maybe they’ll take it into consideration!

http://twitter.com/athpernath Athpernath
It says:
“./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libQtWebKit.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”
What can I do?
Thanks

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
You need to install libqtwebkit4 from Synaptic/terminal

Frank Schäfer
i get the same error although libqtwebkit4 is installed…

http://profiles.google.com/mikefreeman1972 Michael Freeman
You could also try the fix I posted above that replaces the removed files with GE 5.2 files. It seems to work really well, and you won’t run into missing library issues.

http://twitter.com/AntonioGabbiano Antonio Gabbiano
Thank you! It works.

Evians Fulda
Got it working, by installing libqtwebkit4 and libcurl4-openssl-dev

http://twitter.com/iCODeRUS Кожевников Андрей
not working, menus still same.
Frank Schäfer
not working. googleearth won’t start anymore.
tried to start from terminal: couldn’t find command googleearth…

Anonymous
Try :
/opt/google/earth/free/googleearth

Leonardo Corato
not working :( error while loading shared libraries: libcurl.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev should fix it

Anonymous
I cant remove libcurl.
With libcurl.so.4 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libcurl.so.4 on Ubuntu 11.10 amd64 it crash.
If i dont remove libcurl.so.4 then it works.

Anonymous
The crash only happens when I use ubuntu’s libcurl with a web proxy. The packaged libcurl doesn’t crash with a web proxy, but the tips and other web pages doesn’t work when i use the web proxy.

http://twitter.com/cranil Anil C R
sweet! that works for me!

http://twitter.com/iJaga gab hm
Not for me :(

Ruslan Sharipov
awesome! Works perfect on 10.10
http://twitter.com/melvin1809 Konstantin Vlasenko
Also doesn’t work.
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libcurl.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Which package it requires?

Anonymous
Do the “Add Required File” step.
http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev

Mihály Csaba
How can i make this work on fedora?

Thong Tran Chau
I tried the tutorial with Fedora 16 (64bit) but i cannot start GE 6.2. I must remove GE and reinstall. The default font of menu is ugly however readable.

z-vet
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libphonon.so.4: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64
It worked before i made the changes.

Anonymous
You’re probably running 32 bit Ubuntu.
The article says you include libphonon.so.4 only if you’re running 64 bit Ubuntu.
Try deleting libphonon.so.4.

z-vet
Nope, it’s 64-bit. Issue solved, i’ve got the answer on G+

http://profile.yahoo.com/VZTS5NA7QEH4JHFNUG2UGVHY4A zbranca
Work fine for me in Ubuntu 11.10. Thank good, this is the way, because i will never install MS fonts in my Ubuntu. Thank you!
http://twitter.com/JAMcNaughton James McNaughton
Fantastic. Works perfectly for me on 11.10 (32bit).

http://twitter.com/JAMcNaughton James McNaughton
Double Fantastic. Also working perfectly for me on 11.10 (64bit).

http://alienmindtrick.wordpress.com FreeRangeRadical
I can’t place the downloaded file where you indicated since I’m not the “owner”. Which is very, very frustrating.
OH, I can’t use Google Earth now, either. Thanks!!

http://profiles.google.com/mikefreeman1972 Michael Freeman
Did you do this in a root window, as the article says? If you’re doing this as root instead of from a user account, ownership shouldn’t be an issue.

http://alienmindtrick.wordpress.com FreeRangeRadical
Yes, I did it from a root window. And yes, it SHOULD work, but it doesn’t. And yes, I’ve tried it multiple times, insuring each time that I follow the instructions above to the letter.

http://profiles.google.com/mikefreeman1972 Michael Freeman
Odd. Have you tried doing the copy functions straight from the terminal? (sudo cp /path/to/files /opt/google/earth/free)

http://alienmindtrick.wordpress.com FreeRangeRadical
I fixed it. I uninstalled Google Earth.
Thx
http://profiles.google.com/mikefreeman1972 Michael Freeman
That’s too bad. I was hoping we could get it working for you. I also posted a fix that uses GE 5.2 files to replace the files this article says to remove. I think that has a better success rate than what the article recommends, personally.

Hernan
In a terminal type: sudo nautilus
With that, a file browser should open with Administrator rights… that is, you can do everything.
Anonymous
You need to follow the part of the instructions that are headed “Open A Root Window” – this gives you the “ownership” of the folder that you require .

Anonymous
Why do these small tweaks need to be done by end-users?!! can’t this be done from source and provide an update with the fix?!!

http://alienmindtrick.wordpress.com FreeRangeRadical
Especially since so many of these ‘how-tos’ omit one or two minor (read: crucial) steps to make it work.
Anonymous
Agreed, it’s to the developers to deliver good quality software to the end-user!

http://twitter.com/Azthma Azthma
Developers are not supermen! They need support and feedback to improve the software.

http://fitoschidoblog.wordpress.com/ Fitoschido
This is an opportunity for those of us to learn to fix our software and contributing our fixes to other people. That’s why I love Open Source, and not the «gimme everything already chewed» attitude of Windows users. (I say, learn to chew your own food! :)
See this from the positive side.

Anonymous
I agree with you, but to my experience these temporary workouts tend to break when some system upgrades are performed(not all cases though), but from the other point of view, Ubuntu as a fast growing distro attracts many people who expects things to just work(I’ve installed Ubuntu to many people, and there is that moment you feel embarrassed when a simple fix requires you to use terminal or edit some system conf. files, the cases are even worse on other distros like fedora) . There are so many ways to learn and contribute to open source, but I feel we can’t tolerate this as one of them, there’s no learning here, you are just told to delete/replace stuffs not necessarily understanding what they do, and some being afraid won’t even dare to do this.
I think for Ubuntu user understanding how to compile packages, and some apt commands could be sufficient for daily use.

Mandy
This is awesome! Any way to do something similar for Skype?

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
Sadly not that i’m aware of :(

Anonymous
works great
Anonymous
Anyone can sign in his Google account? I receive a “one moment please”, but the wait never ends

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
No, I can’t either. But that applies to before the ‘hack’ and after.
http://profiles.google.com/mikefreeman1972 Michael Freeman
I wasn’t able to until I applied the fix I posted above, putting in some GE 5.2 QT/Webkit files. Now I can log in just fine, but it doesn’t keep me logged in. I have to log in manually each time.

http://rockiger.com/blog Marco
Well done. Looks nice. Does this work with all wine applications?

http://profiles.google.com/mikefreeman1972 Michael Freeman
Google Earth isn’t wine, it’s native code based on QT. Wine apps cannot look 100% native because they rely on Windows (or wine’s Windows-like) libraries.

Chroma Vision
Nice tip. It certainly looks much cleaner and nicer; however, I have noticed that with this change in place no Panoramio photos will load.

Fredrik Jacobsson
No images here either. GE won’t load jpegs…

Chroma Vision
I did some further testing to see if I could pinpoint what files are needed and it appears that GE uses the 4 libQT files that were removed in order to fix the font issue.

http://twitter.com/Edocastilloo Jorge Eduardo
Maybe you need replace the plugin folder with the folder shared in the google groups thread
https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!msg/earth/BT5kyvlwFME/Zd1KKNZEZ48J

http://profiles.google.com/mikefreeman1972 Michael Freeman
If this article doesn’t work for you, try this:
Follow the instructions in this article, then download this file (contains QT files from GE 5.2): http://goo.gl/GxLQw
Decompress this archive and put the files on your desktop. Enter “gksu nautilus /opt/google/earth/free” in your terminal.
Drag the decompressed files from your desktop to the nautilus window you just opened, and allow the files/folders to be replaced/merged.
Right-click on the googleearth file, click Properties, click the Permissions tab, and enable “Allow executing file as program.”
That should do it. We basically just swapped functional GE 5.2 QT files for the non-functioning GE 6 ones.

http://alienmindtrick.wordpress.com FreeRangeRadical
Michael, you’re my new hero! Once I had time, I went through your process and, voila!, I have a very pretty Ubuntuesque Google Earth!
My tin foil cap’s off to you, Good Sir! < :-)-<-<
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mizuki-Oshiro/100001810655569 Mizuki Oshiro
I tried this but when I run google-earth, I get
./googleearth-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libQtXmlPatterns.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Anything I’m missing?
Anonymous
It didn’t work. Now it looks exactly like a Windows 95 app :(
Wally Arms
Worked great for a 32 bit installation. For 64 bit Ubuntu 11.10 I followed the above to get the images working again – but with one exception. For the files extracted from the download, I copied all into the /opt/google/earth/free folder with the exception of the “googlearth” file.

http://just-thinkin.net kmb42vt
In 64-bit Linux Mint 12 (based on Ubuntu 11.10) if I leave the original “googleearth” file and not replace it, Google Earth immediately crashes after it opens. If I replace the file and set it to be executable everything runs fine, the fonts are fixed but images refuse to load. Any ideas?

http://just-thinkin.net kmb42vt
I actually did a fresh install the latest GE.deb (64 -bit) and then followed your instructions only and it worked fine. The instructions in the article left me with a non-working Google Earth (would not start). I double checked and tried everything that was suggested and it simply would not start. Your procedure worked great though.

Freddi
Google [some Googler's are maybe reading this] oh, why you bundle ugly libs?
Anonymous
I think it’s a pity that google can’t make these tiny adjustments to google earth before packaging it. When you consider the amount of time and money they invest in developing such tools, it’s strange that they don’t care about how the finished product looks.
Francisco Adrián Sánchez
A big pitty it doesn’t look good in Kubuntu… even it’ build with Qt… it uses Plastik instead of the default theme (being that Oxygen or QtCurve)

http://profiles.google.com/minimerrill Brandon Merrill
Maybe the qtconfig tool will change it?

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
The Qt4config tool used to be able to control/affect its appearance so it’s worth giving a shot.

Danny Walton
use the new hope theme and I think it would look great in KDE

Juan Pedro Sanchez C
Excellent tip. Works perfectly, just need to be careful and follow all the steps. When I use this kind of tips, that includes using the Terminal I do it dividing the screen in two halves, and it’s much easier.

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
That’s the same technique I use when writing how-to’s like this.

Anonymous
Or you can use Guake terminal and make it easier !

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
Top tip!

Justin Baum
Instead of making a version for each distro, they make it for each kernel.
Windows XP, Vista, 7 use the same cooperative kernel
Windows 8 will not so they have to make a new install
Ubuntu Lucid Maverick have Gnome 2
Natty and Oneiric use Gnome2/3 and Unity
Macs are the same since 2000, but they will need to release to each and every different thing. So I don’t blame them for making a universal program for x86 linux. But they should have a setup popup.
They will need to release for ARM Windows 8 soon and ARM Linux soon too.
http://twitter.com/GMLGeek GMLGeek
What an amazing difference!
Aamir Mustafa
Looking Nice…….. why don’t google guys do this before release ?
http://twitter.com/MrScotchpie Andrew
“[How To] Make Google Earth 6.2 Look ‘Native’ in Ubuntu”
Simple, use google maps with satellite view from any web browser.

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
Smart alec ;)

http://tomslominski.net/ Tom Slominski
Would this work with Sweet Home 3D? Got a project on there and I still use it, even though I’d probably rather use Autodesk Homestyler on my next project.
Anonymous
This is a long standing problem with this app. Can someone point google earth devs to this page? They need to enable this by default. :)
http://twitter.com/iCODeRUS Кожевников Андрей
not working, menus still same.
John Billot
Thank you for this, followed the instructions and works perfectly on Ubuntu 11:10 (this is from someone who is not an expert at this type of activity).

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
Glad it was of help!

Ogün Çakır
those kind of issues shouldn’t annoy ubuntu users any longer.. since google provides a .deb package, any visibility or gui problems must have been solved already..
i cannot define the technical issues undercover; but as an 8-year ubuntu user, that makes me feel disturbed having to mess with terminal etc. this is probably going to google: if you are doing something, do it right!
i don’t want to install windwz fonts, i don’t want to use wine.. i am a linux user. LINUX!!!
http://www.lastfm.ru/user/custard_py custard_py
Although I followed the instructions, Google Plus image upload still won’t work: http://ubuntuone.com/668I3T95Vkbc8Emqb0Ln8S
http://twitter.com/Azthma Azthma
Not working at all in 11.10 (64 bits). After following the instructions, Launching GEarth freezes the desktop! I hade to remove/reinstall.
The least that can be done, is to package the plugins needed in a PPA so these actions could be automated without no hassle. The instructions in the google group are slightly different (for 64bit users).

http://www.facebook.com/lorenzojavier.gonzalezcabrera Lorenzo Javier Gonzalez Cabrer
runs it with sudo… and you may be surprised… try it :)

Anonymous
It worked for me in Mint 12 with Cinnamon with one annoying issue. There is a grey box that appears at the top middle of the window. It stays on top of everything – even other open windows, until Google earth is closed.

Anonymous
UPDATE – The issue is nothing to do with the font fix. I just installed Google Earth on another Mint 12 machine and had a look before applying the font fix and the grey box there also! Grrr.
Anonymous
Alt F2 + r is the only workaround I’ve found so far that gets the grey box to disappear.

Jim
I tried this and although my font now looks nicer and everything still works, the menu dropdown is still white instead of the proper dark grey. I restarted the app, tried logging out and I also tried Michael Freeman’s tip but still no joy.
Ubuntu 11.10 x64 + Unity
http://www.facebook.com/agus6salim Agus Salim
i’ve tried it… hehe, asyik…. ehm, but difficult to login google account from g. earth…. hehe
http://my.opera.com/bachkhois Nguyễn Hồng Quân
Awesome!!!

How To