Ubuntu – Can’t run Google Earth with Ironhide – libGL.so.1 wrong elf class

Looks like you're missing a library file. The program apt-file can be used to find which package provides a certain file. (dpkg -S does this too, but does not work for packages which are not installed)

apt-file search libXss.so yields:

ia32-libs: /usr/lib32/libXss.so
ia32-libs: /usr/lib32/libXss.so.1
ia32-libs: /usr/lib32/libXss.so.1.0.0
libxss-dev: /usr/lib/libXss.so
libxss1: /usr/lib/libXss.so.1
libxss1: /usr/lib/libXss.so.1.0.0
libxss1-dbg: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/libXss.so.1.0.0

You need to install the libxss1 package for that library. If you're running the 32-bit version of Skype, ia32-libs needs to be installed instead of libxss1.

Which (or any) of these methods have you tried?

Method A: (download binaries)

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install lsb-core
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs    (needed for Ubuntu 11.10, 64bit)

sudo apt-get install google-earth-stable

Method B: (download & compile)

sudo apt-get install build-essential lsb-core
sudo apt-get install googleearth-package

sudo make-googleearth-package --force