We have a shared Internet connection at home, with my wife's Windows XP machine as host, and two Ubuntu machines as clients. There's a little application called Proxy for Windows that makes Internet sharing easier.
And that's why I use proxy in the Ubuntu machines, and that's where the trouble begins, for Picasa anyway.

Here's the fix for Picasa behind proxy in Ubuntu 9.04 :

• fire up the terminal and type (or copy paste):
   /opt/google/picasa/3.0/bin/wrapper regedit
  this will open a Wine's regedit version, just like Windows'. It turns out that Picasa for Linux is not so native after all, it runs on Wine. So the next step can be used for Picasa for Windows too.
  
• go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings (see screenshot below, click for bigger image):
  - enable proxy by changing the ProxyEnable value to -> 1
  - add these new string values :
     - ProxyOverride -> leave it blank
     - ProxyServer -> yourhost:yourport
  
• close regedit and run Picasa
  

 

I have problem with Google Earth too, but I can't pinpoint the source. Since the same Google Earth version works just fine on my Karmic Koala beta with same proxy configuration on same laptop. Oh well, I hope next post will be the solution.



keyword : picasa | ubuntu | proxy
source : Picasa FAQ