debian AMD64 and google-earth

[z***@mcmedia.com.au]

High all, does in fact ggogle-earth 64 bit work on Debian AMD64. I
downloaded google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb from there web site, it
installed OK with dpkg. On startup it displayed a message box saying
something like "the graphics adaptor is unsupported..........". Clicking
the OK button caused GE to crash. If you click on the other button "do not
display this error message again", next time one tries to run it it starts
OK, seems to connect to its server OK but its as slow as a wet week, and I
do mean slow.

A comment from frustration.............. Why is this sort of thing so hard
when changing Linux in any major way (in this case, changing from 32 to 64
bit, ALWAYS there is something that will not work. Now I have been mucking
around with Linux now since 1993 and I have spent a lot of time working out
why things will not work, so its not as if I have not tried, but these days
I like a quite life, I just want the system to do WHAT I WANT. I have had
Debian AMD64 installed on this machine for nearly a year and I STILL have
not go it working as well as my 32 bit boxes, everything just works on them.

Searching on the net did not help, all solutions proposed did not match my
error.

Installing via the debian package system did not work either, it
complaining about lack of 32 bit libraries, what in the hell is a 64 bit
exicutable want with 32 bit lbraries.

I am very close to nukeing AMD64 here and installing good old 32 bit.

A very frustrated,
Lindsay

[Craig Sanders]

Post by z***@mcmedia.com.au
Installing via the debian package system did not work either, it
complaining about lack of 32 bit libraries, what in the hell is a 64
bit exicutable want with 32 bit lbraries.

1. Debian is multi-arch. There is nothing unusual about having both
64-bit and 32-bit binaries and libraries on an amd64 system. it works,
and works well, and has done so for several years now.

unfortunately, the most common reason to do so is to support crappy
third-party or proprietary apps when the devs are too lazy or
indifferent to linux to produce a decent 64-bit version. e.g. i
install several open source Second Life clients for my partner and
have to be annoyed by the crappy 32-bit hassles every time i update
them (especially when the devs "helpfully" include wrapper scripts
that only work on their bizarrely configured and idiosyncratic
systems)

and the notable thing - the *crucial* thing to know - about crappy
third-party or proprietary programs is that they are crappy. this is
not the fault of the system. it's the fault of the crappy app.


2. googleearth-package is not actually a 64-bit executable. It
is an 'Architecture: all' package that contains a single script
called 'make-googleearth-package' and its man page.

make-googleearth-package downloads the google earth binary from
google, makes a few changes so that it fits in with debian, and
then generates an installable package with appropriate Depends: and
Suggests: lines.

Package: googleearth
Version: 6.0.3.2197+1.2.0-1
Section: non-free/science
Architecture: amd64
Depends: fonts-liberation, libfreeimage3, lsb-core, libqtcore4, libgl1-mesa-glx, libglu1-mesa , libcurl3:i386, libsm6:i386, libfontconfig1:i386, libxt6:i386, libxrender1:i386, libxext6:i386, libgl1-mesa-glx:i386, libgl1-mesa-dri:i386
Suggests: lib32nss-mdns|libnss-mdns:i386, libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386, libgl1-fglrx-glx:i386
Description: Google Earth, a 3D map/planet viewer
Package built with googleearth-package.

It may have 'Architecture: amd64' but the binary is still i386 so
depends on i386 version of various libraries.

$ file /usr/lib/googleearth/googleearth-bin
/usr/lib/googleearth/googleearth-bin: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-lsb.so.3, for GNU/Linux 2.6.15, BuildID[sha1]=ecf12dc9139e39775445913de6c50bae908a6d1a, stripped


Note that both 'sid' and 'testing'(*) are in a state of flux at the
moment mostly because of the libstdc++ transition. Many packages are
uninstallable, because they depend on specific versions of libstdc++
and/or related packages. This includes many qt and kde packages,
probably resulting in googleearth being uninstallable. This is the
nature of both 'testing' and 'sid', which are beta or pre-beta not
release standard - just wait until the packaging shitstorm is over.
Should be OK on 'stable' though.

If you can install all of the packages in the Depends: line, and
appropriate packages from the Suggests: line (i.e. lib32nss-mdns
and/or libnss-mdns:i386 and either libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386 or
libgl1-fglrx-glx:i386), googlearth should work for you. if not,
you're SOL.

3. you can't blame linux or debian because google chooses not to bother
making a 64-bit version of Google Earth.

Post by z***@mcmedia.com.au
I am very close to nukeing AMD64 here and installing good old 32 bit.

an old phrase including the words cut, nose, spite, and face comes to
mind here but i can't quite recall it.

the real target of your ire should be the crappy 32-bit googleearth app,
not amd64 linux or multi-arch debian - both of which have bent over
backwards to try to support ancient 32-bit crap.



craig

(*) or maybe it's just sid. i run sid on my systems normally but have
reverted to 'testing' for the duration. it's entirely possible that
some of the sid versions of packages that i already installed before
switching to testing are still preventing some of the updates in testing
from being installed. i don't really care at the moment, i'll just wait
until the shitstorm is over....unless some app that's important to me
breaks and then i'll have to investigate further.