Patchy pixels in Google Earth street view

[bugfree]

Glad to be of help. GE v6 lacks good fonts and polish of the later versions, but clear screen resolution sans missing pixels more than makes up for it. You will like Slimjet the more you use it and discover it's many benefits.
Cheers

[m654321]

[color=rgb(34, 34, 34)]@bugfree, many thanks.[/color]  Patchy-pixel problem has now gone with GE version 6.2.1.6014, but you're right it's not as polished as the later series 7 versions, re font & general style.  I also found it to be slower & less snappy than the current 7+ version - at least the pixels look normal!  I wonder if the lack of polish might have something to do with it being a beta version.  I might try any other versions that may exist in series 6 or 7 to see how they compare and post the finds.

Google 'kindly' posted this error message on the screen when my newly installed version 6.2.1.6014 started up.

Code:

404. That’s an error. The requested URL /intl/en/tips/v5/tip4.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

The error appears to mean that no help tips from tip number 1 through to 17 are able to be shown. Again, maybe a bug with this beta version.

Thanks also for mentioning Slimjet - looks interesting - I downloaded it and tried it - very snappy and lovely street views. I do feel a bit stuck with Firefox though - old habits die hard . However,  I wonder why synaptic package manager or the ubuntu repositories don't have it?  Is there a reason for that?  For example, how 'safe' is this software, given the malware problems that come with some other freely available software like Adobe Flashplayer...
Mike

[bugfree]

Hi Mike,

From my tinkering, I suspect that the newer GE versions don’t like the older kernel in LL. For instance, I tried booting LL2.8 on a new Lenovo laptop and it won’t even boot. All others I tried (Mint, Point, PCLinuxOS and a few I can’t remember) with a newer kernel boot OK, but PCLinuxOS is the only one I’ve installed GE on and it runs without pixelating. The older kernel in LL might be the culprit, but that’s based on no firm testing.

For the moment, I use GE v6 for distance measurement only, and use Showmystreet in Slimjet as my main map app. I’ve found Slimjet to be a lot faster than Firefox and now is my primary browser. It does not collect data, has an inbuilt add blocker and can install all Chrome plug ins. Mine is set up with Startpage as my homepage and search engine, with Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere and Zoom as my only plug ins.

I also found turning hardware acceleration on, makes it fly. To check this, type slimjet://gpu
in the URL box and see if hardware acceleration is on. If not, type chrome://flags and change “Override software rendering list” to Enable if not already set and change “Enable GPU rasterization” to Enabled. Don’t change anything else. Restart Slimjet and type slimjet://gpu to check if acceleration is enabled.

My system exhibits the same error message about GE tips, but probably due to the age of that version. Don’t know why the repositories don’t have Slimjet. Perhaps a question for the maintainers. As far as safety is concerned, it’s probably as safe, if not more, than the other mainstream browsers, particularly with the plugins mentioned above. SJ is based on Chromium/Opera. Has many hidden features, like hiding a page heading as you scroll down to provide more visual space. Explore and enjoy.
Cheers

[m654321]

Many thanks bugfree, Google Earth 6.2.1.6014 is working well without the patchy pixellation, so I'm going to mark this post as solved.
(Slimjet, certainly looks interesting too but I think I'll stick with Firefox for now - maybe a bit stuck in my ways!)

Cheers
Mike

[bugfree]

You're very welcome, Mike. Glad you have it working.
Cheers!

[newtusmaximus]

Referring to LL3.0 32 bit, anyone managed to get GE running.
LL3.0 understandably not supporting Google apps after the chrome 32 saga.
Ubuntu 16.04 does not appear to contain lsb core.

Tried installing  lsb release 9.20160601_all.deb  with GE google-earth-6-2-1-6014-beta-es-en-ubu.deb  and no luck.  Also no luck with latest stable release of GE .

Any ideas for 32 bit .  Tks