> This bug affects my system (Kubuntu 11.10 64-bit) specifically with Google Earth. No matter how I try to install GE, whether from the 64-bit deb from Google, or using the googleearth-package installer, trying to start GE in terminal results in "/usr/bin/google-earth: 43: ./googleearth-bin: not found"

I'm in the same boat here, I think one compounding issue is that Google Earth also depends on the lsb-core libraries, however sudo apt-get install lsb-core:i386 causes all sorts of crazy dependency problems (I think this shouldn't happen).  

$ sudo apt-get install lsb-core:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 lsb-core:i386 : Depends: libncurses5:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: at:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: bc:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: binutils:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: bsdmainutils:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: cpio:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: cron:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: ed:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: file:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: locales:i386 but it is not installable
                 Depends: cups-bsd:i386 but it is not going to be installed or
                          lpr:i386
                 Depends: lprng:i386 or
                          cups-client:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: m4:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: mailx:i386 or
                          mailutils:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: make:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: man-db:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: mawk:i386 but it is not going to be installed or
                          gawk:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: ncurses-term:i386 but it is not installable
                 Depends: patch:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: pax:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: procps:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: psmisc:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: rsync:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: alien:i386 (>= 8.36) but it is not installable
                 Depends: python:i386 but it is not installable
                 Depends: lsb-base:i386 but it is not installable
                 Depends: time:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.