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Google Earth 7 was released more than a month ago, however, the new version doesn't work for most Linux users. Here's how to run Google Earth 7 on Ubuntu right now.

Google Earth 7 (7.0.1) features new 3D imagery and a virtual tour guide which highlights interesting places around the world. You can read the official release notes, here.

Unfortunately, many Linux users get the following error when trying to start the latest Google Earth 7:

Google Earth has caught signal 11.

Google Earth signal 11 Linux

And the crash log looks something like this:

[...]
Stacktrace from glibc:
./libgoogleearth_free.so(+0x1e9cfb)[0xf75c1cfb]
./libgoogleearth_free.so(+0x1e9f43)[0xf75c1f43]
[0xf777a400]

One of the Google Earth developers has emailed fixed Google Earth builds (pre-release) to some Linux users who have commented about this issue on the Google Earth forums, and it seems a fixed build will be available soon (the exact date is not known) on the Google Earth download page.

Google Earth 7.0.1.8283 Ubuntu
Google Earth 7 (7.0.1.8283) running in Ubuntu 12.10

Update: Google has updated the official Google Earth packages so download the latest Google Earth and you shouldn't get the error any more.

Besides the "Google Earth has caught signal 11" issue, it seems that the font issue that used to occur for the Google Earth Linux builds has been fixed as well in these new packages.