Progress report: I followed the tutorial http://sparkylinux.org/forum/index.php?topic=2535.0.
dpkg reported two missing dependencies, namely, libfreeimage3 and lsb-core. To install them, synaptic needed to uninstall googleearth. After installing the two packages, I executed the dpkg -i command suggested by dpkg (which command did not include the -f option), and the installation completed without error. However, upon launching /usr/bin/googleearth, nothing appears to happen. I noticed that the file was only 546 bytes, and is a bash script; it reads as follows: ====================================================== #!/bin/sh # 556102 export LC_ALL=C cd /usr/lib/googleearth # this no longer works with Google Earth 4.3, so we have to revert to using LD_LIBRARY_PATH, sorry #exec /lib/ld-linux.so.2 --library-path /usr/lib/googleearth /usr/lib/googleearth/googleearth-bin "$@" GOOGLE_EARTH_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/googleearth if [ ! -z "$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" ]; then LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${GOOGLE_EARTH_LD_LIBRARY_PATH} else LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${GOOGLE_EARTH_LD_LIBRARY_PATH} fi export LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/lib/googleearth/googleearth-bin "$@" ============================================== Now what should I try? RLH