I had a bit of a problem running Google Earth (v 5.0.11729.1014) on my laptop (Compaq nc2400 with Ubuntu 8.?)
I know this laptop can take it – once upon a time it had Vista Business (feel free to groan away Stuart) running on it and Google Earth worked well.
Google earth Opens ok with no errors or anything but it looks like this – and was very stutterey when zooming.
With the help of Google i found out that un-ticking the “Atmosphere” option under the View menu made the zoom a lot smoother but I was still left with a hollow looking image….
Compiz seemed to work OK so i figured the issue was more to do with OpenGL then with graphics drivers. I did have a look around for other drivers for the Intel Mobile 945GM G_card thats in my laptop (found what G_card i had with this BTW). I had a stab at installing them and did not get far…
I was running Ubuntu 8 and V 9.04 was now available so i upgraded and now Google Earth looks like this -
Ok so I’m none the wiser at to what the original issue was but with Jaunty Google Earth is a happier place.
It’s not a perfect world though – when ever i open a menu or switch to another window in the same work space Google Earth does “battle” a bit with it resulting in gray squares and the outlines of continents ect overlying the other program I’m tyring to look at.
How ever if I open Google earth in it’s own workspace/cube side its okish. Opening and closing a menu within Google Earth results in flash of my desktop Image, a flash of gray then back to the Earth Image… I suspect this is the combination of Google Earth and Compiz on a, slightly puney, laptop graphics card. I can live with it as the rest of Google Earth seems to work ok.
Update – Google earth’s basic bits work ok how ever the extra info bits do not display properly. Having had a prod about on Google it looks like Compiz and any OpenGL based program, Google Earth being one, don’t work well together…..
