How to fix fonts in Google Earth 6?

I downloaded and installed Google Earth 6 64-bit from its website. And then like many users, I also encountered the ugly fonts on starting the app. I've tried installing lsb-core and ttf-mscorefonts-installer, but I found that both are already installed. Could someone help me fix this?

I've just installed Xubuntu 11.10 on my 64-bit machine, and downloaded and installed the 64-bit .deb package for Google earth 6.2, and had the same problem with the awful font.

I followed the instructions on page http://omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/01/how-to-make-google-earth-look-native-in-ubuntu, and they solved the problem. To paraphrase:

• First, close Google Earth if it's running.
• In a terminal emulator, give the following commands:
  • cd /opt/google/earth/
  • sudo rm libcurl.so.4 libGLU.so.1 libnss_mdns4_minimal.so.2 libQtCore.so.4 libQtGui.so.4 libQtNetwork.so.4 libQtWebKit.so.4
• Use any editor to edit file /opt/google/earth/googleearth -- but you have to do it as a root, so for instance, the following command from a terminal emulator would work:
  • sudo nano /opt/google/earth/googleearth
• Now add the line export LD_PRELOAD=libfreeimage.so.3 as the second last line of file googleearth -- that is, just before the line LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH ./googleearth-bin "$@" -- and save the file.

• Obtain the file libfreeimage.so.3 (removed broken link) Edit: Since the link is broken you can obtain the file in this package

• If your machine is 64-bit, download the file libphonon.so.4 (removed broken link) Edit: Since the link is broken you can obtain the file in this package

• In a terminal emulator, give the following commands (the ones concerning libphonon.so.4 only if your machine is 64-bit):
  • cd /opt/google/earth/
  • sudo cp ~/Downloads/libfreeimage.so.3 .
  • sudo cp ~/Downloads/libphonon.so.4 .
  • sudo chmod a+x libfreeimage.so.3
  • sudo chmod a+x libphonon.so.4
  • sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libqtwebkit4
• Restart Google Earth. The fonts should now look normal.

Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS

Although the original question was posted 8 years ago in 2011, the problem persists today on July 14, 2019. Eight years ago it was version 11.04 today I'm using version 16.04. The problem today is the font is super tiny on a 4K screen.

I use this script to double the size of fonts in google earth:

xrandr --dpi 192
google-earth-pro

This is on a 4K monitor. On a 2K monitor a 50% increase might suit you better:

xrandr --dpi 144
google-earth-pro

The default dpi is 96 as you can confirm with one of these commands:

$ xdpyinfo | grep dots
  resolution:    96x96 dots per inch

$ grep DPI /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[     9.555] (--) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (43, 44); computed from "UseEdidDpi" X config
[     9.761] (==) modeset(G0): DPI set to (96, 96)