In an earlier post I unfairly trashed Google Earth. The problem, as I’ve just discovered, more than likely rests with my graphics hardware platform, not Google Earth. While I was working with SLED 10 this morning I pulled down another copy of Google Earth and installed it on SLED. When I started Google Earth it was silky smooth in its operations and highly responsive, just the opposite of my experience with Google Earth on my Ubuntu system. This is not a slam of Ubuntu, but a realization that maybe, just maybe, I need to upgrade the video card

on that system (at the very least) if I want a good experience running applications like Google Earth. Conversely, I’ve come to develop an even greater appreciate of Ubuntu’s performance on low-end graphics hardware.

I’m going to start these screen shots off with a view above the Earth zooming into the Kennedy Space Center, then a final shot showing a feature I find really useful, 3D buildings.

First we open up the application. The zoom into this magnification was smooth as silk as well as automatic. And this is where it stopped.

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