Hello Linux Geeksters.
In this article I will show you how to install Google Earth 7 on Fedora 18. There are some errors with Google Earth on Fedora 18, but this is what I have done to go around them.
The required steps are to remove the persian fonts file and install the 32bit version of the mesa-dri-drivers. These provide /usr/lib/dri/r300_dri.so which is what was missing and causing it to crash for me. The google earth rpm also needs to be force installed to get around the ownership of /usr/bin issue.
These are the commands that worked for me:
Install some dependencies:
$ sudo yum install sb-core-ia32 lsb-graphics-ia32
Download Google Earth, for 32 bit systems:
$ wget -c http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_i386.rpm
Download Google Earth, for 64 bit systems:
wget -c http://dl.google.com/dl/earth/client/current/google-earth-stable_current_x86_64.rpm
Install Google Earth:
$ sudo rpm -ivh google-earth-stable_current_x86_64.rpm --force
Remove the persian fonts file:
$ sudo mv /etc/fonts/conf.d/65-fonts-persian.conf{,.bak}
For both, 32 bit and 64 bit systems, install the mesa-dri-drivers*.i686:
$ sudo yum install mesa-dri-drivers*.i686