As indicated in my earlier post here, Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) runs much faster than Ubuntu and any other version of Linux Mint. I really really like it. However, one thing had frustrated me for almost a week: I could not get Google Earth installed and run in LMDE.
Well, later on we found that Google Earth was indeed installed but it crashed immediately after being started. I literally tried all the installation methods I could find over the internet. I even sent the Google Earth crash report to Google. None helped me solve this problem. Then I saw someone on the Linux Mint forum mentioned about the 3D GLX Renderer issue – Google Earth needs a 3D video driver to display things properly. The command to see if the GLX Renderer is working is this command on the Linux terminal:
inxi -G
My output before Google Earth was working was this:
Graphics: Card ATI RS480 [Radeon Xpress 200G Series] X.Org 1.7.7 Res: 1360×768@60.0hz
GLX Renderer N/A GLX Version N/A
So this means that the GLX Renderer is not working at all. This is why I could not run Google Earth on LMDE and why it crashed right away after being started. THE SOLUTION?
Very simple… just use Synapitc to install a package called “libgl1-mesa-dri” – just that, nothing more! Remember to reboot your machine after installing “libgl1-mesa-dri”
If you have not installed Google Earth at all, install the “libgl1-mesa-dri” package first using Synaptic and then use the following commands to install Google Earth:
sudo apt-get install googleearth-package
sudo make-googleearth-package --force
ls (see see the exact filename for the .deb file created)
sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture googleearth_x.x.xxxx.xxxx.deb (use the exact filename)
googleearth (if you see it running, then success!)
Viola! Google Earth should run in LMDE without any problem 
#1 by Hugues-Antoine Suin on October 25, 2010 - 2:22 pm
I too love LMDE. I did a dist-upgrade and it is even faster than before on my laptop with kernel 2.6.32-5-686.
I had the same problem as you with Googleearth.
inxi -G says:
Graphics: Card Intel Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller X.Org 1.7.7 Res: 1280×800@61.2hz
GLX Renderer N/A GLX Version N/A.
I installed libgl1-mesa-dri and rebooted. Googleearth crashed the same way and I lost my desktop themes (Gnome problem)… I uninstalled the lib and the system is back to normal, but of course Googleearth still crashes just after launch.
Is there another way to have GLX work?
Thanks.
HAS
#2 by Aubrey the Ubuntu Linux Guy on October 25, 2010 - 4:45 pm
Have you tried installing libgl1-mesa-dri FIRST and THEN re-installing Google Earth? I would make sure everything is working OK before installing Google Earth. What did the “inxi -G” command give you after installing libgl1-mesa-dri? Apparently installing Google Earth depends upon a stable and working system status.
If it is not too much trouble (I have a /home partition), you can try a fresh install of LMDE and then update everything. Then install libgl1-mesa-dri. Then install Google Earth last.
I too had the Gnome problem once or twice, but after rebooting upon each rolling update, the problem always went away. Hope all this helps!
#3 by Hugues-Antoine Suin on October 26, 2010 - 12:38 pm
My system is clean,it was installed 2 days ago and dist-upgraded.
I removed googleearth then reinstalled libgl1-mesa-dri. No more problem with Gnome and GLX is there ok.
inxi -G says:
…
GLX Renderer Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset GEM 20091221 2009Q4 x86/MMX/SSE2
GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.7.1
Something is wrong with my googleearth-package or the deb built out of it. I’ll have to check more on that.
Thanks a lot for helping fixing GLX.
#4 by Aubrey the Ubuntu Linux Guy on October 26, 2010 - 3:30 pm
I am glad to see that GLX is working for you. I am confident that you will get the Google Earth issue resolved pretty soon.