Google Earth only works as "sudo"

[Kipton Moravec]

On Wed, 2008-05-21 at 09:49 -0500, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> On 5/21/08, Graham Watkins <shellycat.gw at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Hi  folks,
> >
> >  just installed Google Earth on 8.04.  It creates a desktop icon but when
> >  I click on it  I get the splash screen , then the starfield and  ...
> >  er,  that's it.  No earth and no response from any menu items.
> >
> >  However, when I start it as administrator from the command line,
> >  everything (or at least everything I've tried so far) works as it should.
> >
> >  Is this a permissions thing and is there a way of fixing it?
> 
> I found a discussion on the ubuntu forums that discusses this:
> 
> http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-195536.html
> 
> according to that discussion, the problem occurs when you run Google
> Earth as sudo the first time, so the permissions get set wrong.
> 
> According to that discussion, the simple fix is to open a terminal and
> type two commands. (You can copy each line straight from these lines
> and paste them into your terminal -- the $USER variable should
> automagically be replaced by your username.)
> 
> sudo chown $USER:users ~/.googleearth -R
> sudo chown $USER:users ~/.local -R
> 

I saw this and said that sounds cool.

So I went to synaptic package manager, and installed it. It put an ICON
in the menu under Internet.

Selected the menu and it said there was a new version, and it would
install it.

Then it crashed my system. It came back to the Ubuntu Login screen. I
figured it must be the two commands:

> sudo chown $USER:users ~/.googleearth -R
> sudo chown $USER:users ~/.local -R
> 

So I opened up a terminal window and cut and pasted each of the commands.

Tried it again and again it crashed Ubuntu. It came back to the login screen.

What do I look for, what should I do?

The crash also screwed up my mail program. It used to have the list 
of emails above a window with the currently select email displayed under it.
Now the window is only the list of emails. If I click on an email a new window
pops up with the contents of the email. How do I fix that?

Kip


-- 
Kipton Moravec KE5NGX
"Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
--Mark Twain