Google Desktop Now on Linux

mytrip writes "Google was set to launch late on Wednesday a beta version of Google Desktop search for Linux in a sign of encouragement by the search giant for Linux on the desktop. Google Desktop allows people to search the Web while also searching the full text of all the information on their computer, including Gmail and their Web search history. Because the index is stored locally on the computer, users can access Gmail and Web history while offline."

Comments

Privacy

[PaisteUser]

Does anybody have concern for Google knowing what's on their local disks?

Re:Privacy

[Silver Sloth]

Because the index is stored locally on the computer, What, outside of an inbuilt level of paranoia, leads you to think that Google will know what's on your hard drive?

Anyway, all my pr0n is stored on M$'s filestore from now on.

Re:Privacy

[st0nes]

Will they know? It says the index is stored locally, does that mean it never goes to Google?

Re:Privacy

[Simon (S2)]

Does anybody have concern for Google knowing what's on their local disks? Yes I do. That's why I will never use this (or any other Desktop Search that is not Open Source).

Re:Privacy

[DaveWM]

Careful pal, you might want to curb your negative comments against Google. Who knows what data Google has collected from someones desktop about YOU? =V

Re:Privacy

[suv4x4]

What, outside of an inbuilt level of paranoia, leads you to think that Google will know what's on your hard drive?

They have actually a somewhat poor track record of security in their desktop offerings (desktop and web accelerator).

My built-in level of paranoia says, the problem's more to do with this app being a generic attack vector for anyone willing to abuse your computer.

Re:Privacy

[molarmass192]

this app being a generic attack vector for anyone willing to abuse your computer.

Yeah but even then, that's when the beauty of Linux kicks in. If someone discovers, for example, a buffer overflow in the app, they're still facing an unknown kernel version, distro filesystem, and GCC version on top of Linux's user privileges. It's much harder to create an exploit that could be used to take over your account, let alone take control of the system. There's really no wide reaching baseline from which to build an attack on Linux, unlike Windows which has one distro, one compiler. The best they could do on a broad reaching basis is crash the application consistently or maybe corrupt the binary to delete files from your home directory if you install the application locally.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

And will you trawl through every line of the code just to make sure it's doing what you think it's doing?

No you won't, because you can't personally have all the thousands of man-hours that will take.

When did the words "open source" suddenly imply best, most secure, 100% trustworthy?

Re:Privacy

[Simon (S2)]

And will you trawl through every line of the code just to make sure it's doing what you think it's doing? No. A quick grep * socket|wc will do.

When did the words "open source" suddenly imply best, most secure, 100% trustworthy? If my grep does not find it, someone else will some day.

Re:Privacy

[nickallen]

It's a good point but then shouldn't you extend that thought to all proprietary software? Without the source code any software could be doing a search of your files without you knowing. It seems strange to say you will boycott google search but not other proprietary products just because google's product is software that performs searches. It really depends on how much you trust the vendor when it comes to proprietary software.

Re:Privacy

[somersault]

Maybe when you were given the ability to trawl through every line of code just to make sure it's doing what you think it's doing? There are a lot of very geeky/bored people out there you know.. and if anyone was dumb enough to release source that blatantly contained violations of users' privacy, then someone is bound to notice and complain, put it up on /. , etc..

Re:Privacy

[somersault]

Who actually thinks that the things they have done are so bad that google will be able to blackmail them or whatever? YOU LOOKED AT PR0N A FEW TIMES, OH NOESS!!! I mean come on.. google could probably help identity thieves if they wanted to be really mean, but I doubt that would happen. Well, I hope that wouldn't happen. Oh crap :o

Re:Privacy

[Random Destruction]

In short, security by obscurity.

Re:Privacy

[wild_berry]

I guess you could probably use SELinux permissions to deny anything from the Google Desktop access to anything like a network interface.

Re:Privacy

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

A bit of both; part security by design, and part security by obscurity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H a layered defense model! :D

Re:Privacy

[ultraparanoid]

Yes, I do. I also have a problem with Google sifting through my mail (GMail), knowing what I search for (Googling while logged in) and knowing what websites I visit (Doubleclick). Put together, Google knows WAY too much about me. I wrote an article about it: Shameless plug

Re:Privacy

[ultraparanoid]

Agreed. I also have a problem with Google sifting through my mail (GMail), knowing what I search for (Googling while logged in) and knowing what websites I visit (Doubleclick). Put together, Google knows WAY too much about me. I wrote an article about it: Shameless plug!

Re:Privacy

[ThinkingInBinary]

No, it's more like security by diversity. If a burglar had to try dozens of entirely different types of keys (never mind all the key patterns that each type includes) to break into a house, he would not find breaking into houses as attractive a prospect, and if he did try, it would be more likely that someone would notice him. Similarly, if a hacker has to try dozens of different buffer overflow attacks against your system, he's less likely to target it, and if he does, you're more likely to notice it, since naturally a buffer overflow attack will degrade into a crashed program if it doesn't actually execute the intended payload.

Besides, there's nothing wrong with security by obscurity, as long as it's only one tool. For example, moving your ssh port to 2222 instead of 22 will probably subject you to an order of magnitude or two fewer ssh worms, which is a good thing. But of course you'd still want to have good passwords. Obscurity is a useful tool, especially when you are protecting a system that has no intrinsic reason to be selected. It can make you less of a target, and since security is never perfect, any layer that reduces the probability of an attack is useful.

Re:Privacy

[Big Nothing]

I don't normally reply to AC trolls, but I'll bite today:

* No, I don't thrawl through every line of code of every FOSS program I use.
* Those programs that I _do_ go through, I can most certainly miss something or not understand something.

But it's still more likely that I'll find a secret backdoor in an open-source program than in a closed-source one. And the real beauty isn't that _I_ have to find something, but that others, like me, can find something. Nothing much can beat the collective scrutiny of a million nerds.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I can run the code through coverity to find possible buffer overflows. Then you can tell whether they're intentionally planted in there. OTOH, with closed source you'll never know.

Not to mention rootkits, compiler alternating patches, YaST trojans and other binaries that exploit bugs in Intel Core Duo, which are too big to exist in open source software but can go undetected in binaries.

If we liked that, we would've stayed to windows 16 years ago and we wouldn't had wasted our time on this linux thing.

Re:Privacy

[MrMarket]

There's even more FUD fodder from the google blog:"Developed primarily out of our Beijing office..."

ps- let me get the next response out of the way: In Communist China your desktop searches you.

Re:Privacy

[enharmonix]

No, it's more like security by diversity.

All security is ultimately security by obscurity. Things get more secure the less you have less to obscure. If you have to obscure your whole codebase (much less your entire operating system configuration), you're asking for trouble. It's much safer to just obscure the 1024 bits that make up a private encryption key (which doesn't actually even need to be recorded anywhere to verify whether a correct key is supplied).

It's fairly obvious the GP you were replying to was trolling, but that doesn't change the fact he's technically correct, and, this is slashdot, where 'technically correct' is the best kind of correct ;). Cheers.

Re:Privacy

[dintech]

"desktop searches you!" Hehe, that's funny. One of the better X Y's you gags I've seen in a while.

Re:Privacy

[TheoMurpse]

My copy of Google Desktop on XP doesn't talk to the internet at all. I've turned those settings off, and I ran a packet sniffer to verify.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sh. You're interfering with the tinfoil hatmongery. Google knows all, even those things that are never sent to their servers. They have these huge hard-disk reading beams.

Re:Privacy

[dmsuperman]

Yes, some people do. Those people simply don't install this program. Others, like myself, want to share all my pr0n with the world! Or at least Google.

Re:Privacy

[jtgd]

What, outside of an inbuilt level of paranoia, leads you to think that Google will know what's on your hard drive?

I installed Google Desktop when it first came out. It indexed my drives. I went to search for something and when it did it ASSUMED I also wanted to search the World Wide Web (via Google) for that same string. Why I earth they would assume that I cannot imagine, but there was no way to disable this "feature". So Google will know what's on your hard drive by knowing what you are searching for on it. Of course searches to Google are archived forever and available to anyone with a subpoena^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H request. I uninstalled it immediately.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

And the real beauty isn't that _I_ have to find something, but that others, like me, can find something. Nothing much can beat the collective scrutiny of a million nerds. Million nerds? Try a few thousand. Those Millions of nerds you speak of don't have time (unlike you) to read through random code and waste countless hours getting upto speed unless they are going to benefit from it.

People just want good quality free software. Nobody gives a fuck about "open" :)

Re:Privacy

[kuzb]

[...]an unknown kernel version, distro filesystem, and GCC version[...]

While this is a valid point (within the context of the post), it's definitely not anything beautiful. It's the source of many headaches, especially where you have to compile your own drivers not included with the distro - like I have to do with my laptop every time I update the kernel.

Re:Privacy

[ichimunki]

That is a wacky default setting (having the desktop search input box run a web search), but it is configurable so that the default is to do a desktop search. My own opinion is that Google Desktop is a great idea, but-- so far-- a fairly poor implementation. One thing I find cool is the ability to search multiple machines at the same, but I am leery of sharing my indexes via google.com, rather than directly across my own network. Not to mention that the Advanced Search interface is horrible. And the indexing isn't reliable to the point where it doesn't interfere with the system.

Can anyone recommend a Linux/Open Source alternative?

Re:Privacy

[Lillesvin]

From the linked blog post: For most Linux users, looking for files, documents, or emails usually involves some combination of 'find' and 'locate,' but sometimes these tools don't quite do what you're looking for, like finding that single PDF containing the specific topic you're looking for. Or you just wish there was a much easier way to find something than 'find /home/username -name '*.pdf' and 'pdftotext pdf_file_name.pdf output.txt...'

Or we use Beagle... Besides, using find, locate and stuff like pdftotext and detex is quite powerful, because you can't do stuff like 'locate libpng | grep ^/usr > libpng-list.txt' in neither Google Desktop, Beagle, Spotlight or whatever MS calls their search-thingy.

Re:Privacy

[IamTheRealMike]

No. A quick grep * socket|wc will do.

void *fn = dlsym(NULL, ReverseString("tekcos"));

But more generally, it's very common for programs to use utility libraries that make network calls on their behalf. Simply shelling out to wget would bypass your absurdly simple check and doesn't have to be malicious. How much software is written these days that invokes BSD sockets directly? I wouldn't do it if I had a better library to wrap it, and usually I do.

If my grep does not find it, someone else will some day.

Your faith is remarkable but misguided. How many people do you think read the 10,000 line auto generated shell scripts we call "configure"? Not many. Probably none.

Re:Privacy

[monta]

When you download the Google Desktop for Linux you are presented with the agreement that includes the following.
It says that you give Google the right to publish any content you display using their services.

I like Google, but that license is unreasonable. I have sensitive information on my disk.

Snipped from the license agreement:
"
11. Content licence from you

        11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services."

----
Hello Google? Anybody home?!?

-Monta Elkins
Information Security Officer
Radford University

Re:Privacy

[nexex]

If you use Gnome you might want to look at Tracker.
http://www.gnome.org/projects/tracker/

Re:Privacy

[Prof.Phreak]

...And why aren't they using their Washington cronies to ban `find' and `grep'?

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

> All security is ultimately security by obscurity.

All cryptography is security through obscurity. Security can also be based on capabilities and tokens that have nothing to do with secrets. You can't replicate the obscure information of something you don't have.

Re:Privacy

[jZnat]

I think that's more because of the fact that each kernel update usually has a slightly different ABI (but the same API), so the driver isn't binary compatible anymore. This is an annoying problem with video drivers when you want to stay up to date with the proprietary ones from NVidia for example.

Re:Privacy

[jZnat]

Strigi is a fast and good search program, and it will be part of KDE 4 (it's still desktop-neutral, however). There's also Beagle which supports more file formats and whatnot, but it requires mono (C#) to run and is a bit of a resource hog.

Re:Privacy

[bluefoxlucid]

Uh, this statement is totally technically inaccurate. The buffer overflow has to take advantage of the structure and positioning of the stack. With stack base randomization (PaX, and the weaker Exec Shield stuff that went to mainline), this becomes more difficult; without it, just inject your shellcode directly into the stack. Distros like Ubuntu ship without PAE mode enabled due to some recent Intels not supporting it; this means they don't use the NX bit, so the stack is executable all the way. A system with a PAE kernel will be invulnerable; but the modified attack works on the non-PAE system as well anyway.

Re:Privacy

[hotfireball]

I am not sure about local disk privacy, but I had real experience with information leak. We had a "hidden" URL in public server, which never been populated. To get this URL you need to type it manually. This was done for the prooject presentation to some companies and really this URL was used only by few people without entering it elsewhere. But suddenly it appeared in Google engine. But one guy used Google Desktop from Windows OS. I am not sure, but I suppose two things: Google has magical crawler, which can read your mind and never populated, temporary URLs. Or, Google Desktop sends some YOUR information to its search engine, which is more realistic reason. I don't want to blame Google for an intentional spyware. It is more likely just a feature, which is simply not welcome.

In fact, as a user, I had installed it on my Mac and didn't find it useful -- cumbersome and bulky in use, makes your machine works heavy and yet Spotlight still does better and much lighter. Just my opinion.

As a result, I think all of those search engines should be open sourced. Otherwise it may be potential "spyware", even from a company, which not-yet-beast. For an alternative, I am happy enough with Beagle and/or Recoll on *nix and Spotlight (not opensource, but at least do not sends your info) on Macs. Windows?.. Dunno. Don't use.

Though I am not sure about Spotlight too... :-)

Re:Privacy

[shellbeach]

Your faith is remarkable but misguided. How many people do you think read the 10,000 line auto generated shell scripts we call "configure"? Not many. Probably none. Heh, I don't know about you, but I read them all the time when something in the configure process fcsks up.

I guess that gets filed under "security by screwed up customised systems" ...

Re:Privacy

[onemorechip]

void *fn = dlsym(NULL, ReverseString("tekcos"));

That would be insecurity through obscurity.

Re:Privacy

[mhall119]

No, it's more like security by diversity. If a burglar had to try dozens of entirely different types of keys (never mind all the key patterns that each type includes) to break into a house, he would not find breaking into houses as attractive a prospect, and if he did try, it would be more likely that someone would notice him. Bad analogy. If the door is too hard to break into, the burglar would just take the much easier method and break into windows.....oh, maybe it was a good analogy after all.

Re:Privacy

[PastaLover]

Strigi is a fast and good search program, and it will be part of KDE 4 (it's still desktop-neutral, however). There's also Beagle which supports more file formats and whatnot, but it requires mono (C#) to run and is a bit of a resource hog.

I don't think that's a fair characterization. I run beagle on some quite old hardware and while there might be some slowdown while indexing (crappy IDE pretty much slows everything down when random disk access occurs) it is overall quite fast and not at all a resource hog. Unless if you count 28MB of memory as resource hogging.

I have on the other hand been bit by bugs in both beagle and meta tracker where they seem to get stuck in infinite loops indexing the same data over and over again, or decide for some unknown reason not to index a particular file. Beagle seems to have gotten better at this lately, still waiting for a new release of tracker to test and see if it's got some of these little bugs fixed.

Re:Privacy

[PastaLover]

Who actually thinks that the things they have done are so bad that google will be able to blackmail them or whatever? YOU LOOKED AT PR0N A FEW TIMES, OH NOESS!!! I mean come on.. google could probably help identity thieves if they wanted to be really mean, but I doubt that would happen. Well, I hope that wouldn't happen. Oh crap :o

If you're a catholic priest, that might be sufficient blackmail material. The thing is, if you know everything a person does there's a good chance you'll find some dirt on them you could use, for the specific social environment they live in. Now you probably wouldn't want to blackmail a priest (what for?) but the average (american) politician would probably have to kiss his career goodbye if he was caught browsing manloverules.com on a daily basis. Adjust orientation/fetish for local politics.

The real danger by the way is not that google is going to use this data, because they probably won't. They don't want to get into the business of blackmailing politicians. But what if other people, who manage to infiltrate one of their datacenters, get to the data? These could be some very malicious people (i.e. the CIA) intent on doing a lot of damage. Now me, I'm not very paranoid about what gets out on the internet about my browsing habits, but if you are in a sensitive position and/or doing stuff you don't want the rest of the world to know about, you better take action accordingly.

Here's the link.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://desktop.google.com/linux/index.html

Re:Here's the link.

[suv4x4]

And notice the subtle and elegant interface the search is implemented with. That aged, oversized and messy look, a look that says "Linux desktop".

Disclaimer: yea, I totally mean what I said.

Re:Here's the link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Be fair: some google employee and probably coded this during his 20% hobby time.

Re:Here's the link.

[pherthyl]

Huh? Looks about the same as on Windows. Sure, maybe it could be prettier, but it seems more or less fine to me. That thing is the search box that is always hidden until you hit CTRL CTRL to bring it up.. It's not like you have to look at it all the time.

Re:Here's the link.

[metamatic]

That's nothing to do with Linux, that's the ugly fonts his web browser was set up with when he took the screenshot. Google Desktop search results look fine on my system.

Re:Here's the link.

[TheoMurpse]

Or you can use the browser interface. For me, I have "gds [QUERY]" as an alias for "http://127.0.0.1:4664/search?flags=68&num=20&s=YH TvZxMhNMPwxHVQ8E7O4S5aFMc&q=[QUERY]" in Opera. For me, since my browser is always open, it's as easy as (1) ctrl-T, (2) gds [QUERY] to open a new tab and search for something.

I was thinking about getting Beagle set up in Linux, but it runs on C#/mono whatever, and over on Digg everyone was ripping on Beagle for not being very powerful, and for being very processor intensive. I'd like to know if /.ers have had this same poor experience with Beagle.

Re:Here's the link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just use Tracker instead? It's written in C.

Re:Here's the link.

[jZnat]

Ugly fonts my ass; get an LCD screen already and get with the times! Subpixel rendering is great.

Spousal Abuse

[eldavojohn]

It's kind of sad that a company who powers its hundreds of thousands of computers in clusters with a trimmed down RedHat puts Linux second on the list of operating systems to support with its software.

I know Google's just playing the numbers (far more Win users than Linux) but you would think that there would be at least enough respect present for them to develop and release for both platforms in tandem. Google has the resources to do that, it's almost like some sort of 'love yet neglect' relationship that churns out of American movies these days.

I hope Google has bigger plans than slowly rolling out its apps in Linux well after it's put them out in Windows.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Google is a publicly held company, not a soup kitchen.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[suv4x4]

It's kind of sad that a company who powers its hundreds of thousands of computers [redhat.com] in clusters with a trimmed down RedHat puts Linux second on the list of operating systems to support with its software.

You assume they built Google Desktop to run it on their own clustered computers? Or is this one blatantly fallacious argument you pulled off there.

How about counting the OS numbers on the machines they're targeting.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[ElleyKitten]

Google is a publicly held company, not a soup kitchen. That analogy would only work if all the homeless people at the soup kitchen wrote their software and ran their company, yet Google would still not allow them to try their products until everyone else had.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[skoaldipper]

Google is a publicly held company, not a soup kitchen

Works for them. Sorry. Couldn't resist.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[EveryNickIsTaken]

yet Google would still not allow them to try their products until everyone else had. No, that's not a correct analogy, as Google does not have to produce and sell any product just because *you* say so. A better analogy would someone getting pissed because they can't get a Ferarri engine put in their VW bug.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Xenex]

It's kind of sad that a company who powers its hundreds of thousands of computers in clusters with a trimmed down RedHat puts Linux second on the list of operating systems to support with its software. Third.

Google Desktop has been available for Mac OS X since April.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[ElleyKitten]

yet Google would still not allow them to try their products until everyone else had. No, that's not a correct analogy, as Google does not have to produce and sell any product just because *you* say so. A better analogy would someone getting pissed because they can't get a Ferarri engine put in their VW bug. No, it would be like a company where everyone drives a VW and uses a VW in their daily work and would be less productive if they had to switch to a different vehicle, but the company releases Ferrari accessories first and foremost and only releases VW versions long after the Ferrari versions.

And the analogies get stupider and stupider, but the point is, while no one can demand Google do anything, it's really weird that they use almost exclusively Linux computers in their work, yet Linux gets second (or third) shrift when it comes to releasing products. If they think Linux is so great you'd think maybe they'd want to support it to help make sure it's always around for them.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no correct analogy because if you can't understand the topic at hand without having to resort to an analogy you are not now, nor will you ever be, a geek.

Go be an automobile mechanic or something. A a chef at a soup kitched. Just stop cluttering up Slashdot.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Desktop searches are designed for the non-techies. Non-techies typically use Windows. 'Nuff said. Look, I know everyone here has hard-ons for Linux here, but please use some common sense.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Way to spell, no spell.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[ElleyKitten]

Desktop searches are designed for the non-techies. Non-techies typically use Windows. 'Nuff said. Look, I know everyone here has hard-ons for Linux here, but please use some common sense. There's plenty of people who use Linux on the desktop, and I'm not saying they have to release Linux programs at the same time as Windows or Mac, I'm just saying it's weird that they use Linux but don't put a priority on making software for it.

That said, I'm actually just happy they've release what they have. We have Google Earth, Picasa, and now Google Desktop. We've dealt with worse from other companies.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[value_added]

Google is a publicly held company, not a soup kitchen.

So Google's efforts to develop their app is somehow akin to charity? If you're trying to make that argument, you've not done so because it amounts to nothing more than saying a vendor who ignores a subset of their market (non-Windows users) is meeting their fiduciary responsibilities by dismissing it outright. That was said about Firefox users not so long ago and it was proved both wrong and embarrassing.

The OP, on the other hand, articulated clearly what I think is perfectly valid series of observations. None of them is in conflict with making a buck, or whiney as one poster trollishly suggested. Moreover, I think the OP's comments fit well to varying degrees with not only with Google's mission statement, but also their position in a market under constant threat of monopoly power and abuse.

If there's any soup kitchen element to Google behaviour, it's their continuing efforts in offering non-money making betas to the public, or expending efforts and money in an attempt to distinguish themselves in ways that no Fortune 500 company would ever consider.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[BlackCobra43]

I, for one, profoundly hate our car-analogy making overidiots.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Cal Paterson]

Maybe because the whining is not related to the releases, but in fact the attitude of Google themselves?

Re:Spousal Abuse

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Google has the resources to do that

Yes, they have the resources to do both, but is it not true that if they devote 100% of their resources to a single platform, they could release sooner for that platform? By my reasoning, EVERY company has the resources to release on multiple platforms at the same time; it just boils down to getting the biggest bang for their buck (as always). Google is after market share, and that means devoting resources appropriately.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

it's really weird that they use almost exclusively Linux computers in their work

When you go to work as a google dev, you're offered a windows machine or a mac machine. They consider linux a server OS.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[CmdrGravy]

A better analogy is to think of Google as a enormous green fingered space worm slowly oozing across galaxies. The enormous green fingered space worm gains the energy for it's oozing and gardening from eating red dwarfs but gardens only black holes properly - it's gardening on red dwards is haphazard and lacksadasical.

Now we have an excellent analogy which explains exactly what's happening at the moment we can easily see that since the universe is so massive and no one cares whether or not black holes or red dwarfs have any gardens on them the space worm can continue oozing on it's way regardless of whatever any insignificant beings on Earth might think.

Before anyone points out that the red dwarfs might decide not to be eaten by the giant oozing space worm unless it also provides them with nice gardens please consider how stupid this will sound.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[LordEd]

If you read and follow the 'Privacy' thread above, you'll find that some Linux users will reject the software immediately because it isn't open source. Why should Google write software for Linux when some users won't use it because it doesn't follow their software beliefs?

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read and follow the 'Privacy' thread above, you'll find that some Linux users will reject the software immediately because it isn't open source. Why should Google write software for Linux when some users won't use it because it doesn't follow their software beliefs?

Since this is straying further and further offtopic I'll post this anonymously but (and this is a big idealistic naive but) I think it would be nice if Google re-invested that which it has gained so much from and release more of its projects as open source. I mean, Google doesn't owe anyone anything but there's this idea of giving back to the community that has helped you so much if even only to keep that community alive and thriving.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[rainman_bc]

We have Google Earth, Picasa No, we have an old, stale version of Picasa with only token support now. Picasa for Linux is ass and the Blog this feature for example is now broken because they updated blogger and haven't bothered yet to catch up the Linux version.

There's a developer in the group that says they are working on it, but it's been like this for quite some time - so it shows that Google's linux support is only token support at best. If they had Linux support they'd use a cross playform development process rather than porting wine to support their apps.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[ElleyKitten]

That's an awesome analogy.

Speaking of analogies, why the hell is this thread called "Spousal Abuse"? When did Google marry Linux, and why wasn't I invited to the wedding?

Re:Spousal Abuse

[catbutt]

It's not just more Windows users than Linux users, its that most Linux users wouldn't run it anyway, presumably because they are sure that the software sends your private files back to Google, where its employees sift through them and make fun of you or something.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. What the GP is saying, and he's quite right, is that google is focusing it's efforts on where the users are. When they have time, they'll clean up the linux slop. If you are a developer at google, and you want to build an app, even if it will never get beyond beta, will you spend your time making something for the masses where your work will truly be seen and felt, or for the handful of homeless linux fags like yourself.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[metamatic]

It's kind of sad that a company who powers its hundreds of thousands of computers [redhat.com] in clusters with a trimmed down RedHat puts Linux second on the list of operating systems to support with its software.

Third. The Mac version of Google Desktop was released some time ago.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[LordEd]

Google is providing an application that is known and used by regular users on a Windows environment and providing something familiar in a Linux environment. The other option was not to write it at all.

I wouldn't say that the thread is off-topic. Slashdot is filled with many Linux users. The news is here. Google cooks up Google Desktop on Linux, and the Linux community responds by sending it back to the kitchen because they didn't receive a copy of the recipe along with it.

Sure, it would be nice if Google released code. Is it required? No. By releasing a binary, its as though Google did something worse than not porting at all.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

That's completely false. Almost all of the developers inside the company use Linux or MacOS X. Practically no one uses Windows outside of testing applications inside a VM.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

The news is here. Google cooks up Google Desktop on Linux, and the Linux community responds by sending it back to the kitchen because they didn't receive a copy of the recipe along with it.

The "Linux community" hasn't sent fuck all "back to the kitchen". A couple of people have said they won't use it because it's not open source. A couple of people saying something on Slashdot is hardly representative of the entire Linux community. People like you need to understand that people within the Linux community, much like people within the Windows and OS X communities, do not share the exact same values. People within each of these communities have differing opinions on a wide variety of topics. Making such a broad generalization based solely on what a couple of people on Slashdot said is fucking retarded.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Denney]

You should have stopped at "'Nuff said".

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Sir, your logic is impeccable.

Some Windows users will no doubt refrain from using the software because they fear Google is invading their privacy. Some companies will not let their employees install the software because of infosec concerns. Why should Google write software for Windows when some users won't use it?

Re:Spousal Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

No... it's nerdy to have to use an analogy to explain it to the jocks.

Re:Spousal Abuse

[hmccabe]

I had no idea homeless people at soup kitchens wrote software. I'm ready to get rich. My new software development model : Hobosourcing

Beagle

[prock307]

They have Beagle http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page to compete with, not sure how useful it will be on Linux. But on Windows at work I can finally find my emails and other documents!

Re:Beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

not only beagle, but there's also http://www.gnome.org/projects/tracker/ to compete with, not written in mono n stuff.

Re:Beagle

[smartin]

I had to disable Beagle on mu machine, was sick of it using all my cpu.

Re:Beagle

[nkeric]

check out the tracker project: http://www.gnome.org/projects/tracker/

Tracker is a tool designed to extract information and metadata about your personal data so that it can be searched easily and quickly. By using Tracker, you no longer have to remember where you've left your files. To locate a file you only need to remember something about it, such as a word in the document or the artist of the song. This is because as well as searching for files in the traditional way, by name and location, Tracker searches files' contents and metadata.

It should be faster and more light weight :)

Re:Beagle

[GooberToo]

For those of us that not in the know, which ones are written in Mono. I'd like to know which ones to stay away from.

Re:Beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that. My Dell Optiplex GX280 is super loud when the CPU load spikes. I know beagle is running again, when my system gets so loud I have to shout to be heard over it. Plus it seems to run forever just to index my home directory. No offense to the Beagle team, but it needs some work to be a little more kind to other processes on your system, some way to throttle the sucker down. If my system is any indication, it is doing way to much work and has way to big a database for such a small home directory.

Re:Beagle

[oever]

Not only Beagle but 4 other desktop search engines. Beagle, Strigi, Pinot, Tracker and Recoll are five search engines that work together on a common search API for the free desktop called Xesam. The Xesam API is nice and the free desktop search programs are powerfull. More importantly, they have commandline tools, are faster and allow more tuning of what to index and what not. On top of that an ontology (hierarchy of fields) has been worked out that will be supported by these search engines. This will allow any desktop application to use any of these search engines to integrate tightly. No doubt a translation layer will be written to let GDS also use this API. Browsing the GDS website, these things are notable. Google Desktop Search

• is closed source software
• is widely deployed and tested on other platforms
• has a stable well documented API
• uses COM for communication
• has a large brand recognition and there will a demand for it
• calls analyzer plugins based on file extension
• has a limited, unexpandable list of categories for files
• identifies files by mtime + uri
• uses wchar_t internally
• is file based
• has a documented API for querying the search daemon ( I do not know which protocol )
• has no command-line tools

This means that just as the existing programs are starting to come to terms, Google comes and returns the chaos on the desktop search scene. While I like Google internet search, their desktop offering has me feeling eerie. I would prefer using Mono over Googles closed source program. But even better is the ultra-efficient Strigi which will be part of KDE4 and indexes streams instead of files.

Re:Beagle

[gardyloo]

You might try Recoll http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/, based on the Xapian back-end. It seems to produce larger indexes than Beagle, but is faster (much!) and you have more search possibilities, AND it hasn't corrupted the search indexes once (as Beagle has several times).

Re:Beagle

[legrimpeur]

for windows there is also the Microsoft solution called "Windows Desktop Search" you can download it here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/def ault.mspx for Windows XP cheers

Re:Beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the Beagle project leader was hired by Google to help migrating their Google Desktop application to GNU/Linux.

Re:Beagle

[rtb61]

I would think more to the point, any OS utility like disk search on an open source OS should be open source.

A lot of open source advocates are pretty put off by closed source hardware drivers but a hard disk search utility, eww. I think this is going be be about as popular as another SCO Linux distribution would be.

I wonder how long it will take for an open source version to develop, that not only looks better, and does a better job, and is guaranteed free from advertising for life but also when it does phone home it only ever phones you.

With regards to privacy, fot Internet search I have started using this, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/317 3, not sure whether it's doing and good but I hope it confuses the crap out of all those targeted advertising schemes. I would think if enough people started to use it, it would also end up averaging out the search engine hit statistics, but luck for google's apparent market share.

Re:Beagle

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Beagle

Re:Beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I had beagle on for about a week when I installed Fedora Core 6 and it sucks. It sucks CPU, and it also sucks in general because it's so dumbed down. It's one thing to present a simple interface with an advance options button; it's another thing entirely for it to have virtually no options at all (search by filename, search by date, search part of the filesystem). I guess these options go against Beagle's philosophy; in that case the philosophy sucks too.

Re:Beagle

[jordan314]

There's also some stiff competition from grep and find.

Re:Beagle

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Jon was hired to work on their open source stuff.

Re:Beagle

[darkwhite]

That shouldn't be hard - last I checked, Beagle really, really sucked. It wouldn't find anything and I had to remove it to stop it thrashing when I was working.

Re:Beagle

[metamatic]

I would prefer using Mono over Googles closed source program.

I'd prefer an open-source non-mono-infected search over either. Let us know when there's a KDE Xesam implementation packaged for Ubuntu, OK?

Re:Beagle

[Hatta]

Did you try nice?

Re:Beagle

[Grifty]

Windows Desktop Search (which isn't for Linux, and is thus off-topic) was a CPU hog the same way I hear Beagle is.
I had to switch to Google Desktop to keep my CPU from spiking and causing major issues.

Confining it to a single core worked on my dual core machine, but it still ate what it could.
On my single-core work tablet it spikes and hogs worse than my (corporate-required) Symantec AV.

Re:Beagle

[x_codingmonkey_x]

I've used several of those searches before, Beagle, Meta Tracker and Strigi. I've found them pretty useless. They gave far too many results and it was hard to find exactly what I was looking for. Their interfaces were pretty crappy and didn't offer the important results.

I'm playing with GDS right now and I'm finding it to be significantly better.

Re:Beagle

[TheRaven64]

Nice stops a process stealing CPU from others, but it doesn't help mobile users who don't want something hitting their processor 100% and draining their battery for little benefit.

Re:Beagle

[Almahtar]

Woo! I'll give that a shot. I haven't been using Beagle because .NET can eat a penis.

Re:Beagle

[ydrol]

The problem I found with Beagle is that it added loads of weird extended attributes to my file system. When I happened to copy a file (that had been indexed by Beagle) from one FS to another, it would copy the contents and then give a weird "Operation not supported" error, and result in the final exit value of the command (mv,cp etc) being non-zero. Details here Or here if you want to cut the pre-amble I was actually warming to desktop searching inside PDF's and emails in one go, but this made me beat a hasty retreat back into my corner...

I think I'll wait

[niceone]

I think I'll wait until it's out of beta, won't be long, right?

Re:I think I'll wait

[Don_dumb]

Beta testing has lost all meaning thanks to Google, how long before we see companies using 'Gamma' testing, for products that they want the consumer to have more faith in than a beta product but still have the excuse of "it's in gamma testing at the moment" when anything goes wrong.

That sounded too 'marketing', I feel sick.

Re:I think I'll wait

[alexgieg]

Some people already do this. The Auctioneer addons pack for World of Warcraft has alpha, beta and gamma versions released before the official release.

Re:I think I'll wait

[Dragonslicer]

...how long before we see companies using 'Gamma' testing... My memory may be faulty on this one, but hasn't MySQL been doing this for several years?

Re:I think I'll wait

[quiddity]

flickr was gamma until recently. now it says "flickr loves you". I don't know which is worse.

slocate?

[Helmholtz]

Even with the privacy concerns aside (though I do think they are significant), I don't see any reason why I would want to use google destktop instead of slocate.

Re:slocate?

[jonesy2k]

The obvious reason would be because google desktop search can search inside files and thus index emails etc.

Re:slocate?

[LiquidFire_HK]

Because slocate only searches in the file names of files and has to update its database periodically (the latter can be remedied with rlocate), while things like Google Desktop search, Beagle, etc. search inside the files' contents and metadata as well as the names, update themselves in real time, and can show you matches from multiple sources in one place (search results from files, emails, address book, etc.)

Re:slocate?

[Ant P.]

Yes, but so does grep.

Re:slocate?

[LiquidFire_HK]

Indeed, but grep does not index the files, so searching is slower if you're searching through a large amount of files.

Re:slocate?

[6031769]

Solution: Swish-e.

Yes, it is open source.

Re:slocate?

[jma05]

Swish-e is OK for creating website indexes, but it does not have any kind of desktop integration that I know of. Google desktop and the open source alternatives, beagle and tracker are specifically built for that.

Distributed Desktop Search

[jonesy2k]

What would be really powerful would be a google desktop search which could search multiple machines at once eg. your desktop, laptop, perhaps even keeping an offline index of your usb drives. Then you could search in one place and easily find whatever you're looking for. I can see the privacy issues now, though.

QT, GTK or Mono?

[bogaboga]

Anyone know whether this tool will be QT, GTK or Mono based? I slashdotter needs to know, thanx.

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[ceeam]

"Requires glibc 2.3.2+, gtk+ 2.2.0+" - well, what do you think?

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[morbuz]

"Requires glibc 2.3.2+, gtk+ 2.2.0+"

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you interested if you don't have any clue what those things are? GTK, QT or Mono? Christ.

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[wild_berry]

Winelib, if Picasa is the pattern they're following.

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Mono even have a GUI library?

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[cmacb]

Picasa may have used Wine, but it certainly didn't set a pattern. Google Earth isn't using Wine as far as I can tell:

http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

It runs faster on my Linux box than on my Apple computer. A recent Google presentation claimed they'd be doing more and more things on Linux and I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has many. Windows.Forms and GTK#, for a start.

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[G Morgan]

Google Earth uses QT as most Google apps do. The reason Picasa uses Wine is because they acquired Picasa and it was already Windows based.

Re:QT, GTK or Mono?

[Pichu0102]

Oh, so it'll be Mono based. Nice to know.

How does it run?

[oddman]

The article says it was "developed natively." So this is definitely not the win.exe version wrapped in Wine?

Re:How does it run?

[Mr. Underbridge]

The article says it was "developed natively." So this is definitely not the win.exe version wrapped in Wine?

Nope. Runs for real, native stuff as far as I can tell. And, I might add, it runs in more than gnome and KDE as claimed - it parked in fluxbox right in the tray like a good boy. The RPM even converted to a Slack package just fine.

It hasn't indexed yet even though I've told it to, but I think it's waiting for idle time on my machine and I'm killing it this morning.

Re:How does it run?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is a slack package?

Perhaps you mean "slack role" eh? Slack isn't a package manager.

... the slack avenger!

Re:How does it run?

[Mr. Underbridge]

WTF is a slack package? Perhaps you mean "slack role" eh? Slack isn't a package manager.

What the hell are you talking about? Slackware comes with its own package manager which provides a utility for conversion from rpm. Which is what I did.

gtalk and all the rest

[WindBourne]

I have waited for sometime to see gtalk on here. I have disappointed that they have not done so.

Re:gtalk and all the rest

[ElleyKitten]

I have waited for sometime to see gtalk on here. I have disappointed that they have not done so I prefer gtalk within google mail anyways. Even if you don't, since Linux users can at least talk on gtalk I'm not surprised that program wasn't made a priority.

Re:gtalk and all the rest

[gigne]

No need to wait for Google to port gtalk. The protocol works with most of the popular IM programs such as Gaim (Now called birdshit or something) or Kopete.

IIRC all of the protocols relay through the Jabber network anyhow.

It is pretty trivial to set up, and unless you walk to specifically use a crappy closed source app, I am not sure what your concerns are. Did I miss the point?

Re:gtalk and all the rest

[egr]

Birdshit (or Pidgin) does not support VoIP

Re:gtalk and all the rest

[WindBourne]

Try talking (not IMing) over either of them to gtalk . I currently use kopete over it, but the ability to talk would be useful.

Gtalk ?

[kgp_crap]

I hope other google products like GTalk follow soon.

Re:Gtalk ?

[slummy]

There are plenty of multi-protocol clients that can handle the Jabber protocol.

Here's one.

Re:Gtalk ?

[kgp_crap]

Even Gaim supports the Jabber protocol.
But AFAIK theres no IM Client that allows you to 'talk' to with the person your chatting. :)

Re:Gtalk ?

[holomorph]

yes, but how many support voice chat with GoogleTalk users?

No 64 bit

[JackieBrown]

I wish they would start making 64 bit versions of their stuff so we could quit trying to force install their products.

Re:No 64 bit

[jfekendall]

Strangely, it works well in an x64 environment. I installed it and am using it on OpenSuse 10.3 x64 edition with no complaints.

Re:No 64 bit

[Rik Sweeney]

I'm so fed up of people complaining about the lack of 64 bit versions of software. Unfortunately you guys jumped the gun on 64 bit, everyone uses dual 32 bit processors these days.

But fret not, you can join them by simply cutting your processor in half.

Re:No 64 bit

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone uses dual 32 bit processors these days

Fools! bewhahaha!

Re:No 64 bit

[Anonymous Coward]

apt-get install ia32-libs ia32-libs-gtk

How hard was that? That said, we really should have 64 bit binaries.

Re:No 64 bit

[wetelectric]

Not sure compiling a 32-bit program on a x86-64 platform automatically means it takes advantage of the x86-64 platform

Re:No 64 bit

[drinkypoo]

Not sure compiling a 32-bit program on a x86-64 platform automatically means it takes advantage of the x86-64 platform

Before Hammer (the original x86-64 architecture) was even released, AMD announced that they were seeing something like 5-15% improvement just by compiling for 64 bit. You get 64 bit data types and operations on them in a single cycle, not multiples, for example, and there are other benefits.

Re:No 64 bit

[wetelectric]

woah, you learn something everyday.. although I'd like to hear it from a source other that amd! ;)

Re:No 64 bit

[ajs318]

That's because OpenSUSE isn't a true 64-bit Operating System. It has a 64-bit kernel, but both 32- and 64-bit libraries and can run 32- or 64- bit code (except for a handful of closed-source 32-bit programs that use one or more of the instructions that are not available when the processor is running in 64-bit mode). In fact, most "64-bit" GNU/Linux OSes (except Debian) are hybrid 32/64-bit.

64-bit Debian is a 64-bit Operating System in the way that a Continental tape measure is metric. That is, it has a 64-bit kernel and 64-bit libraries, and only 64-bit libraries (/lib64 exists but is just a symlink to /lib). The idea is that you can make "32-bit software" run on it simply by recompiling. Hence, no need for two versions of the same library and problems if they get out-of-sync. The recommended (or, at any rate, least-proscribed; Debian are known for their puritanical stance on non-Free software) method for running closed-source 32-bit applications on 64-bit Debian is to set up a chroot environment with its own 32-bit libraries.

64-bit Ubuntu does it the SUSE way rather than the Debian way.

Re:No 64 bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Compiling it yourself requires that you have source code. Google's apps are not open source.

Re:No 64 bit

[G Morgan]

For one there are twice as many general purpose registers for x86_64 than there are for x86 so that alone will provide a huge benefit. Really it's better than that since half the x86 'general purpose' registers have specific purposes so you actually are getting 3 times the number of general purpose registers.

Re:No 64 bit

[Chandon Seldon]

64-bit Ubuntu does it the SUSE way rather than the Debian way.

Except for the fact that this software is distributed as a .deb archive, and dpkg doesn't support installing 32 bit packages on a 64 bit system.

Re:No 64 bit

[ajs318]

Yes, but Ubuntu installs both 32- and 64-bit libraries. It pretends the 32-bit libraries for a 64-bit system are a 64-bit package, and that 32-bit closed source apps (as packaged for Ubuntu) are 64-bit packages which depend on the package containing the 32-bit libraries.

Re:No 64 bit

[MrHanky]

I don't know about you, but on my 64 bit Debian Sid system, the IA32 libs are in */lib32/. IA32 based apps like Enemy Territory work without chroot environments. Debian may be puritanical, but not impractical. They're not going to force you into only using free software. Where's the freedom in that?

This delay has been good

[clashdot]

Thank you Google for delaying the Linux version! We now have Beagle, Strigi, the Nepomuk project and more as free alternatives to your proprietary software. There would have been free desktop search software anyway, but most likely there would have been a bit less enthusiasm for its development, and some distributions might have flocked to supporting the Google product.

I'm excited that Linux is still flying under the radar to such a large extent, when it comes to commercial software. Soon it will be Ready For The Desktop (TM) and the Linux desktop is still 100% free!

Re:This delay has been good

[Anonymous Coward]

Have any of the projects you refer to been given front page Slashdot articles?

Hmmmm, no. Yet Google, a for-profit proprietary software company, releases a beta and they get one. This is despite the fact that the Linux version was released well behind both its OSX and Windows counterparts.

Do you know what that means? That the world's premier FOSS discussion site would do something like that? That sound of crickets chirping you hear when you search Slashdot for Beagle articles: It means that no one really cares about closed vs. open.

Even the readership of Slashdot will quickly compromise its ideals to put its hands on something shiny. Google Desktop? Front page news! I sure hope GTalk comes to Linux too!

Or maybe I'm wrong and none of these projects have the kind of Slashvertisement that Google does.

Re:This delay has been good

[McNihil]

Having run beagle (0.2.7-9) on my 300+ GByte $HOME a year ago or so was clearly an indication that it wasn't good enough... it kept on reindexing all the time... causing HD thrashing (even on a RAID0 with 200MB/s throughput.) Granted it was mostly after updates that happened and it isn't a 1.0 release but still.

I am now testing GDLinux and it feels much more sane and does not contain wine nor mono which I am quite happy with.

Re:This delay has been good

[crimperman]

Have any of the projects you refer to been given front page Slashdot articles?

Hmmmm, no.

Beagle has. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/18/ 195220

That sound of crickets chirping you hear when you search Slashdot for Beagle articles:

Did you actually go and search for it? Thirty seconds ago, this http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=beagle gave me the above article as the fourth result. It daes from Jan 2006 and I remember it making the frontpage (or at least my RSS feed).

It means that no one really cares about closed vs. open

No-one? You really don't read Slashdot often do you? :o)

I assumed the reason this made it to /. was because it meant us geeks could now stop having to say "no but it will be and here's an alternative" when asked if Google desktop ran under Linux. Now we can say "Yes but there is a better alternative".

Re:This delay has been good

[Vexorian]

Linux was ready for the desktop years ago, although there are still people that think "ready for the desktop" means "complete windows clone"

Re:This delay has been good

[clashdot]

I originally typed "ready for the general desktop," but removed that word not to complicate my post. I continuously evaluate whether I can in good conscience recommend Linux as a Windows replacement to my friends and relatives. I cannot. Yet. There are a number of show stoppers at various levels of the Linux desktop stack (i.e. from the kernel up through desktop applications). But it is getting close. Maybe three years? If you think sooner, just consider the state of user documentation for most free software.

In many specific cases, e.g. a corporate setting with a limited set of applications, control over which hardware gets installed and the backing of system admins, Linux is definitely ready. As another example, I have personally been using Linux exclusively on the desktop for the last seven years. But I'm not a typical user.

Re:This delay has been good

[tuxic]

Yes, this is an easy misconception indeed! An operating system ready to use with desktop applications is one thing (that should matter the most!). Another thing is comparing other operating systems with Windows and, what are the things people distinguish the most between Windows and another operating system? Games. Why? Because it's the only highly visible strength seen there, or have I missed out on something else unique for Windows today? Yes, hardware support is usually the 2nd argument although it's a matter of opinion and personal experience rather than a fundamental truth. What else? Not sure. I know that KDE 3.5 was my primary desktop for a long time, months at a time, with minor switches to GNOME for testing purposes - other than that, KDE was the standard desktop for me. Worked fine, even though my hardware was slow (650 Mhz Pentium-III with 256 MB SDRAM @ 100 Mhz). Ready on the Desktop(TM) is really a matter of opinion and bias, it's not facts anymore.

Hmmm

[Wolfraider]

So, how long do you think it will be before Google sues the Linux community to remove slocate and similar programs from the OS?

Re:Hmmm

[Nicolas MONNET]

So, how long do you think it will be before Google sues the Linux community to remove slocate and similar programs from the OS?

As soon as slocate achieves over 90% penetration, and qualifies as a monopoly as Microsoft does.

I wonder how likely that is.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. slocate finds files based on a name pattern. Google Desktop searches the contents of documents, emails, PDFs, etc.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

That is ridiculous! You can remove slocate if you want, unlike Windows InstantSearch.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could mod you as troll. Holy crap.

Re:Hmmm

[G Morgan]

When Linux distros employ hidden API's.

light and works on light windowmanagers

[e**(i pi)-1]

It was a nice surprise for me to see that google desktop does not eat too much resources, even when indexing the harddrive. Better than beagle or even slocate. Also, it works witout needing KDE or Gnome on light desktop managers (who start it up automatically). I use blackbox and the google desktop server by hand with "gdlinux start" from the terminal and double allows searching without an additional gui from the browser. An other surprise was that it works both on firefox and mozilla. Not many extensions do that.

Re:light and works on light windowmanagers

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running it for most of the day so far, and what I have noticed is that since installing Google Desktop, my Thunderbird instance regularly shoots up to 100% CPU and becomes unusable for short periods of time (even after it has finished the initial index). GD seems to install a Thunderbird Extension to capture new messages and I suspect it is somehow responsible.

I'll give it a while to see if things calm down (I have astronomically large amounts of email, so it's possible it is still working in the background to catch up... the index count for email messages is not even close to what I actually have). Just wondering if anybody else has seen this.

that's right, suckers!

[Anonymous Coward]

now you can become one with the real borg.

What about a Solaris version?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about a version for Solaris? It shouldn't be that hard to port.

Re:What about a Solaris version?

[ajs318]

The Linux version might compile fine on Solaris; or at any rate, the necessary tweak may be a trivial one (usually some d.h. hard-codes a constant in somewhere instead of getting it from the header files). Linux and Solaris aren't too different, esp. if you have the GNU toolchain installed. Give it a try.

Re:What about a Solaris version?

[learningtree]

yes.. but thats possible only if u have access to the source code.. for now.. we are at google's mercy to have a solaris version

Re:What about a Solaris version?

[ajs318]

In that case, don't touch it with a barge pole. Anything that searches inside files and for which you haven't seen the Source Code is a massive security risk.

+500 Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was another company it would've been flamed to ashes. But nooooooo, closed source from google is supposed to be cool?

Waiting for the -paid by MS- blogers to talk about "the Desktop Users" and "the corporate Customer", both of which are imaginary and used as excuses to create dumb, insecure and user friendly software.

No tarball?

[sokkalf]

I could only find .deb and .rpm packages, what about those not running a debian- or redhat-family distro?

Re:No tarball?

[slummy]

It seems they offer a script that performs an auto-compilation for those of us running REAL distros (Slackware).

http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/scripted.h tml

Re:No tarball?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you should run a better distro then... and I don't mean something with that uses that crap-awful RPM format.

Besides, if you don't have a deb or rpm extractor then what kind of shit distro are you using anyway?

Re:No tarball?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Alien.

But it'll be nice if they did release it...

Re:No tarball?

[slummy]

for those of us running REAL distros (Slackware).

Can't take the time to login and post, can't take the time to read the post.

Re:No tarball?

[denominateur]

All that script does is set up the google rpm/deb resositories automatically on systems not running gui's or for people who prefer the shell. Google does not provide source packages for desktop.

Re:No tarball?

[ajs318]

I checked that script, but it still requires a package manager; it only works with apt, yum, yast, urpmi or rpm. Also, it wants root privileges.

But don't worry! You can install .deb packages on Slackware with minimal effort. They are actually "ar" archives that you can open with ar -x foo.deb. Then you will see files called "debian-binary" (just a format specifier, which you may safely ignore), "control.tar.gz" (which you can leave alone for now) and "data.tar.gz". The last is the interesting one; and in fact, being a gzipped tarball which needs to be unpacked into the root directory, is embarrassingly similar to a Slackware package. Just tar xvzf data.tar.gz -C/ to unpack it. With any luck, your file layout will resemble what Debian were expecting closely enough for it to work. The "control.tar.gz" archive contains Debian metadata, MD5 checksums and essential scripts which are run when installing / removing.

Re:No tarball?

[gomoX]

Just tar xvzf data.tar.gz -C/ to unpack it

Yummy.

Re:No tarball?

[ajs318]

Oh, come on. If you're a Slackware user, you're unlikely to have any problem with that.

Re:No tarball?

[drinkypoo]

Oh, come on. If you're a Slackware user, you're unlikely to have any problem with that.

Corollary: if you do have problems with that - you probably shouldn't be a slackware user.

Re:No tarball?

[gomoX]

Therefore and because yumminess is transitive, the same comment applies to Slackware as a whole.

-- Your local deb-based distribution evangelist

Re:No tarball?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you manage to reply to it?

it does

[oni]

it already does this. click preferences -> search across computers.

Linux

[Junky191]

"Because the index is stored locally on the computer, users can access Gmail and Web history while offline."

Which is a good thing because despite Linux being 60 some years old now I still can't get this damn wireless card to work despite battling with drivers and make install for days.

Re:Linux

[RiffRafff]

What?

Just how old do you think Torvalds is?

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

In Internet years, Linux is even older than 60.

Re:Linux

[dominious]

No, this must be a post from the future. Which means in 2050 there will still be issues for wireless cards on linux:/

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares? torvalds is an idiot diverting attention away from real operating systems.

he needs to take his little pet project and blow.

Re:Linux

[ElleyKitten]

No, this must be a post from the future. Which means in 2050 there will still be issues for wireless cards on linux:/ But that's ok, because by 2050 we'll have other methods of getting online, and those might actually work! Kinda like how we never got dialup to work, but dammit, we got ethernet right! We'll never figure out wireless, but we have a one in three shot of figuring out whatever comes next!

Re:Linux

[wild_berry]

Is GP one of the Blog Re-enactment Society?

Web browser interface sucks

[Danathar]

Although I like Google desktop, I REALLY wish there was a way to have my results come up in some sort of file management application like explorer(windows), or Konqueror (File manager, not browser), or my file management app of choice.

You can't work with the results when they come up in your browser window.

This is one thing that Spotlight really does have going for it. Being able to have a search folder which dynamically has all the results I want whenever I open it is really useful. Now spotlight needs some work and is not perfect, but google desktop is really lacking in this area.

Re:Web browser interface sucks

[ljubomir]

Yes, I really like the way kio_locate works. My favorite uses for it are krusader and file open dialog. But we should really wait for KDE4, and it's strigi integration, which I suppose will be more useful than just plain locate.

Re:Web browser interface sucks

[Bomarrow1]

Looks good, I've just installed it and seems pretty good. Being able to just bash in locate: into almost any kde window is great.

Women bleed!

[Anonymous Coward]

We women bleed for 5 days! Did you forget?

Obsession with search

[Orlando]

Am I the only one baffled by this obsession with local search? I send most of 5 days a week using desktop computers and a lot of the weekends, and I have to say that I very rarely need to search for anything locally. I put stuff where I can find it later using simple directory structures. Is that so difficult?

Re:Obsession with search

[tomstdenis]

shhhh. Some people look at all the utils they install as badges of honour. Look, I got anti-vir, anti-spy, anti-drm, firefox quickloader, open office quickstart, google, yahoo, etc... going, I'm so 1337!!!

I too put files where I can find them, and on the occasion I need to find something I use grep. I guess we're the exception?

Tom

Re:Obsession with search

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree- I don't get it either. Like you, I put stuff where I can find it according to a simple yet sensible method (folders, basically). I'm baffled by the whole desktop-search thing as well.

Mike
QuickTrivia.com

Re:Obsession with search

[Anonymous Coward]

back in the day, we had to find all of the individual chunks of the file that get spread out wherever the heads landed that there was free space. It wasn't until MS made MS Defrag that it took me less than an hour to read any of my documents.

Re:Obsession with search

[denominateur]

Most people are not that organised, at least not when using computers. (clicl download, immediately click ok, "damn where did it put that file...)

But judgemental issues aside, i think it would be quite useful to have a desktop search application that actually collects the documents that lie around all over the drive and puts them in neat directory structures with a topical organisation... Hmm.. where's that tracker source!

Re:Obsession with search

[Ephemeriis]

Am I the only one baffled by this obsession with local search? I send most of 5 days a week using desktop computers and a lot of the weekends, and I have to say that I very rarely need to search for anything locally. I put stuff where I can find it later using simple directory structures. Is that so difficult?

I installed Google Desktop on my Windows machine not too long ago... And uninstalled it shortly thereafter. I just didn't use it. Sure, it was nice to be notified when I got a new message through GMail...but that's honestly about the most I did with it.

Like you, my files are generally in order. Most everything, at home and at work, goes onto the server in a logical directory structure. Shares are named in a way that makes it obvious what is inside, subdirectories provide additional structure, and file names are descriptive. I don't usually have to search for anything...just click through the appropriate directories to find the file exactly where it belongs.

I do make use of Gmail's search feature fairly heavily though... It is sometimes difficult to locate a specific email message from a specific person, especially when that person doesn't like to use descriptive subject fields.

Perhaps it would be more helpful in locating some obscure configuration file or dll... But I was under the impression that one of the key features of Google Desktop, as opposed to slocate or Window's native search, was the ability to search within the contents of a file - something that probably isn't going to help much if you're just trying to locate squid.conf or dmime.dll

Re:Obsession with search

[Corporate Troll]

No, I think we're just old and got so used to the hierarchical organization of files that we don't see the advantages of having to search. Basically, the system keeps a big blob of data for you and you simply ask for it what you want to work on. Organization? Not needed: the big pile of junk is indexed continuously (eating up CPU cycles...)

Personally, I prefer files & folders... but alas, this often goes beyond the comprehension of the basic user. Oh, and personally, I see it as a badge of honour of running as less tools as possible....

Re:Obsession with search

[bensode]

There are just a lot of lazy and ill-prepared users to be accomodated. I'm not perfect by any means, I just prefer to make sure things get put where they belong and catagorize them properly. I've never understood the fascination with desktop search engines and why anyone would want to cache everything.

Re:Obsession with search

[gosand]

Am I the only one baffled by this obsession with local search? I send most of 5 days a week using desktop computers and a lot of the weekends, and I have to say that I very rarely need to search for anything locally. I put stuff where I can find it later using simple directory structures. Is that so difficult?

I definitely do this at work, on my Windows machine. However, at home on my Linux machine I have years of old stuff. Usually I put it in a directory called "old" in my home directory. But even then, sometimes I do need to find things. But really I just use locate with grep. I can usually find things really quickly. Even for emails, I use grep. I still use pine, and grepping my various mail files will usually produce results very quickly.

But as you say, in the end it is MUCH easier to be somewhat organized in the first place. If people choose not to be, then I guess they need things like this.

Re:Obsession with search

[Lanboy]

Because most of us are not as clever and well organized as you. Or not as anal. What do you use to look up contact info for a project you worked on for a week three years ago? Google desktop gives me a quick hit on three emails and my IM logs in windows.

Re:Obsession with search

[mwlewis]

I rarely use it for searching for files, but it's great for archived email. Message subjects aren't always great at identifying the content, and it just gets worse as the emails age. When you've got thousands of emails on a single topic/project, it's not worth it to spend all of my time creating and managing a hierarchy that probably wouldn't help me too much. In order to be useful, emails would likely have to span multiple hierarchies. Much easier, simpler and faster to just search on some keywords.

Re:Obsession with search

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one baffled by this obsession with local search? I send most of 5 days a week using desktop computers and a lot of the weekends, and I have to say that I very rarely need to search for anything locally. I put stuff where I can find it later using simple directory structures. Is that so difficult?

I installed Google Desktop on my work machine and later removed it because I never used it. At work, I only really need to search individual projects, or my e-mail on an IMAP server. The search built in to the applications I use is quite adequate (as is grep) and I never need to a full system search.

But at home, after recently moving all my files to OS X (from Linux), I've started to use Spotlight a lot. I've got a ton more files than my work machine and some files/folders are completely disorganized. I have files that date back to the early 90's. I'm slowly getting more and more organized, but its a huge undertaking to really get all my files organized. Organizing my old files is not even really that useful since I don't really need them very often. I've change my organization scheme several times over the years without taking my old files and putting them into that schema (they just get tossed into a folder like "olddrive" or something). There is always some folder somewhere that has stray files that I've forgotten about. In that case, searching my machine is very useful.

Re:Obsession with search

[Shawn Parr]

I put stuff where I can find it later using simple directory structures. Is that so difficult?

You know, I used to feel this exact same way. Even after I upgraded to Tiger I hardly ever touched the Spotlight menu, and only really used it in Mail.app where I did occasionally need a bit of help digging for some random nugget in the last couple of years worth of email archives.

Then one day about a year ago, I decided to give it a try. I think it was because I was working on a very large number of projects at the time and each project was complicated enough that they had their own nested folder structures, and while I could find everything, having to drill down into the folders was getting a bit tedious. I also have a decent number of applications installed, not a ton mind you, but a pretty decent amount, and digging through the apps folder for the utility I don't use often enough to pollute my dock with was also getting tedious.

So I tried Spotlight to see if it might make things better. I really expected to think it was stupid and go back to the status quo. What I found was that in many cases, while Spotlight was not perfect, and occasionally it was actually slower depending on what the computer was thinking about at the time, it was definitely more convenient. I use it all the time now. I still save all my documents in an intelligent folder structure with descriptive names (both for folders and for filenames), however when I need to find a manual or spec sheet for something, I type the name into Spotlight and look at the PDF results. Need to launch Cyberduck (the FTP client I use), type it in Spotlight and hit the key command to launch the first item (Applications appear at the top of the list).

Of course these desktop search programs are not for everyone. It may not work for you. However, don't knock it till you have really tried it. I don't mean try it for one search this afternoon then just dismiss it. Give it a week or two and really use it during that time. Maybe it won't work for you, but that doesn't automatically mean that the people it does work for are doing something wrong, they just use available tools in a different way.

Re:Obsession with search

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason for me: Archived academic literature. I save a large amount of journal and conference papers in pdf format to my hard drive. I don't read them all at once. Later, it is very helpful to have a desktop search to find the papers relating to a certain subject. Or, if I can't remember in which paper I read something. This is about the only reason I use desktop search.

Re:Obsession with search

[TuringTest]

Lucky you, that can predict all your future information retrieval needs and plan for them in advance. For all us that have to relate previously unconnected bits of information - or use information structures designed by others, automatic indexing is a bless. How would you "find in the last quarter documents all appearances of the term minimize risk", by laying files in structured folders?

Re:Obsession with search

[chooks]

Desktop search is priceless to me. I am in medical school and we have 99.9% of our lectures in PPT format. I take notes with openoffice. Being able to quickly search locally lets me easily find material from months ago to refresh my memory on it and also to integrate old information with new information.

That being said, I used google desktop for several months but then I started having problems with it updating its index (removing files that I archived off and indexing new ones). I didn't have time to screw around with it and so started using copernicus -- which is nice, but it doesn't have the CTRL-CTRL invocation that I grew to love on GDS (but does have other nice features that GDS didn't have).

Re:Obsession with search

[Milton Waddams]

At home I don't bother with search. I find my music by searching in Rhythmbox and all my other stuff is easy to find 'cause I organise it well. In work though, Beagle has saved me loads of time. I've got LOADS of files on my computer. If I'm searching for a bit of code or for some presentation or whatever I've downloaded, I can usually find it in a few seconds with Beagle. There's not a chance I'd be able to find it without a search app.

Re:Obsession with search

[Anonymous Coward]

As an academic I find this kind of stuff incredibly useful. I have hundreds of pdf articles on my computer that I have downloaded over the years, and even though I try to sort them by subject and give them sensible names it's not always that easy. Especially not when a paper covers several subjects. Being able to pull up all the articles on my hard drive that mention term A, term B and author C for example comes in handy all the time.

Re:Obsession with search

[Hatta]

How would you "find in the last quarter documents all appearances of the term minimize risk", by laying files in structured folders?

find ~/documents/2007-0[456]* -print0 | xargs -0 grep -Li "minimize risk"

Re:Obsession with search

[HoldenCaulfield]

It's a paradigm shift. Do you sort and organize files, or do you just use local search? gmail is the best example of this shift - gmail didn't even have folders originally, and relied upon tags and searching.

Desktop search tools are the extension of this model - don't worry about files, directory structures, etc. Just search instead.

Definitely a shift, and not one that I want to make, as I like the organization provided by hierarchical directory structures. That being said, I do have google desktop installed, and find myself using it occasionally to find files. I like the fact that it searches my web history as well. I do wish it would index my email (we use groupwise here, which afaik there isn't a plugin for).

Re:Obsession with search

[jma05]

Filing documents is easy when your model of organization is same when you file as well as when you search. This is not always the case.
Not everyone deals with the same number of documents. Some of us simply have more. Manual filing is not a scalable process.

Organizing documents I get in email and papers I read is more tedious because they often fall under more than one category and I cannot predict under what information need I will have to review them. So filing is not the right way to do it although I do file in some simple scheme.

Re:Obsession with search

[barik]

The point is not to search the files themselves, but the contents in those files. I have thousands of electronic manuals on different values, pumps, and motors here on my hard drive in PDF format. It is nice to be able to type into a local search, say, 'Versa valve', and get all references to it throughout my technical documents.

Re:Obsession with search

[massysett]

Exactly.

Presumably you save things for a reason: you might need them later. The question is, what's the probability you'll need it later? If the probability is high, put it somewhere where you know you'll be able to find it. The problem is that doing this with tons of files or email messages is very time-consuming and requires you to set up an organizational scheme.

If the probability that you'll need it later is lower, it is easier to just throw the document in a pile somewhere. Then it is there if you need it. You spend much less time filing things, but more time digging things up if you need them later.

The key is balance. Obsessively filing everything you might ever need will take lots of time initially. Throwing everything into a huge pile will take lots of time if you often need things in the big pile. You have to decide when to employ which method.

The question is not unique to computers. My mom teaches first grade. At the end of the year she takes all her documents, throws them into a garbage bag, and leaves it in the basement. She figures the probability she will need any of it is very small. If she needs something, it's there and will take a long time to find. But it makes no sense for her to sort all those things initially--which will certainly take lots of time, even if she winds up needing none of it.

Desktop search makes it easier to throw things into huge piles.

I used to initially sort everything too. Emails went into folders, as did files. I do this much less now--even though I don't use desktop search. Emails just go into gigantic folders. I can use Mutt at home or Groupwise at work to search through them when I actually need something. I find I spend much less time sorting. I spend a little more time searching, but the tradeoff is worthwhile. I do sort my computer files a bit--I know where the important ones, like passwords and checkbook ledger, are. The others I don't try to sort so much anymore.

So absolutely I see the appeal in desktop search. Less time sorting things you might not ever need is well worth it, even though you spend a little more time searching for things you do need. But no, desktop search makes no sense if you're going to obsessively sort everything and then search. Then you spend time sorting and searching!

Final note: Google is not doing anything revolutionary here. Long before Gmail one could throw emails in a huge folder and search them later. Using grep is also easy on a Unix machine. Of course the problem is that Windows is full of files that have arbitrary byte sequences that aren't amenable to grep. That's the problem with Windows I guess.

Re:Obsession with search

[Anonymous Coward]

So that assumes:
  - everything you have fits in a "simple directory structure"
  - you never forget where anything is
  - you only care about the title of something, not its contents
  - you never download anything that somebody else worked on

I think the last time this was true for me was when I was using a C=64.

Re:Obsession with search

[TuringTest]

So you DO use search, instead of using simple directory structures, as the original poster advocates. Proves my point.

Re:Obsession with search

[Orlando]

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The search utilities we are being offered, Google toolbar, Spotlight are most useful bringing order to an already chaotic environment. But also they then promote the idea that you don't even need maintain any order any more so you stop doing it, making the tools even more useful.

In the long term I wonder if this is a dangerous thing, people will worry less about order and rely more on tools to bring order to their environments. But order covers other areas too, in your approach to work, coding, writing etc. I wonder if this will start breaking down eventually?

Native!

[Zebedeu]

So they have engineers with knowledge of (and working with) Linux interfaces!

Good, would it be such a stretch to shift some of those guys to make a decent port of Picasa for Linux? Because the current emulated one tends to suck a little bit.

It's strange that after moving from Windows to Linux, Picasa is the one software that I miss the most, after MS Office (and, of course, the ability to play any game).

Re:Privacy - But is it open source?

[DuncanE]

Not really. I've used Google Desktop on Windows and it gives you the option to turn off sending stuff to Google servers.

The bigger issue for me is if it includes the source so I can check it doesn't "phone home". Plus it would be easy to extend of course.

So, Google, any chance of releasing the source code? GPL even?

How Droll...

[xipietotec]

Not only is this a day late and a dollar short, it doesn't really even match up in functionality. Deskbar + Tracker == Win. Tracker is super small, super fast, deskbar is highly extensible. With a few extra deskbar plugins, I can search google, gmail, use it as a calculator, launch programs from it, search flickr, man pages, parse things right into yubnub (well, in firefox at least), search all my bookmarks, delicious, etc.

This is something that the open source desktop has *lightyears* ahead of the competition.

Re:How Droll...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tracker is also highly likely to have hundreds of exploits - try reading the slop those developers call code sometime. I haven't seen code that bad since I TA'd a first-year Comp Sci course (actually, even those first-year students wrote better code).

Uhh

[Inoshiro]

Right around when they file to have Apple remove Spotlight from OS 10.4+ -- when the US Federal court system rules that Apple (or any of the distribution related companies) have a monopoly, and have been proven guilty of leveraging that monopoly to further their own business ends, to the detriment of the market.

Basically never, you troll.

Woo hoo!

[sportster]

Great now we can have beta versions of malware running on our linux desktops too!

Don't Google Me So Close

[Doc Ruby]

Although Google has released other projects as open-source software, where it can be freely modified and redistributed by anyone, Google Desktop for Linux is proprietary. The software was developed by Google's Beijing engineering team

So not only will Google get the index to what's on my local disks, and probably also every keystroke/mouse/click/URL, but it'll get Cc'ed to China's mafia Communist government. Google has a huge evil deal with those evil bastards, and there's no way to know that their Desktop isn't part of it. It wouldn't be the only serious privacy risk Google "mitigates" with only PR, not security.

I'll just wait for Beagle to copy all Google Desktop's features, but in open source that people examine for spyware.

Re:Don't Google Me So Close

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation 0
    50% Troll
    30% Interesting
    20% Insightful

Which TrollMods are they? Just Google fanboys? Or Chinese mafia astroturfers? Maybe they're just Chinese Google botnets trollModding anonymously from unsuspecting Slashdotter's accounts, after they've installed Google Desktop.

security?

[spwelton]

For those of you on Linux with google desktop, why are you concerned about security. Just use a firewall. Firestarter is relatively easy to set up and you can watch google's stuff if you want to. Sean

Re:security?

[x102output]

I was just about to say that. Everyone is concerned over security....but you can turn OFF any chattering with google's servers. There has yet to be any reports of it violating privacy. I also find it terrible that so many of you are bitching about this. A major corporation is starting to embrace Linux and you guys just shit over anything they put out? I thought this was a good thing. anyway, I installed this on my debian machine and it rocks. Really fast and really slick.

Re:security?

[mr_goodwin]

Because firewalls don't help with many of the types of security flaw that have been seen in other versions of Google Desktop.

Take a look at the recent anti DNS pinning vulns for an example of this - data is stolen via your browser; a firewall simply wouldn't help.

Actually, the "just add a firewall" mentality really hampers real security as security features do not imply security; SSL, packet filters, etc. don't help with web application vulnerabilities any more than a software firewall helps against anti-dns pinning, CSRF or cross site includes in this case.

Re:security?

[spwelton]

I definitely agree to that. Its nice to see corporations porting their softwares to linux.

Re:security?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Just use a firewall.

First invent a problem, then invent a way to fix it? How creative, I guess that a nice way keep you busy when there's nothing else to do.

Re:security?

[spwelton]

My thought on the matter though, is if you're really that paranoid, you can watch the connections list. I wouldn't because I have better things to do, but its there, you can use it. And yes, I know that a firewall won't close security holes in software...

Re:security?

[spwelton]

I'll install it tonight. [sarcasm] I'll let everyone know if Google robots with flamethrowers torch my house. [/sarcasm]

Re:security?

[mr_goodwin]

Yes, you're absolutely right; you could watch the connections list, although I suppose having to do that every time you used your browser would render your machine pretty much unusable.

Finally, and Amen!

[Sturm]

I am probably one of the LEAST organized people you will ever meet but, like the parent poster, I've used desktop computers forever and am totally at a loss to explain this obsession with "desktop searching".
I have Doc folders and photo/music folders and temp folders for projects and I've got e-mail back to 1999 (and routinely go back and look for old e-mails) but have never needed more than just Thunderbird's search capabilities (and rarely use that).
I'm seriously interested in WHY people need a tool like this. Is it for finding cross-referenced material (like an e-mail that corresponds to a doc file)? Is it because people no longer want to use file managers? What's the deal?

Re:Privacy - But is it open source?

[Bob-taro]

Not really. I've used Google Desktop on Windows and it gives you the option to turn off sending stuff to Google servers. Meaning that is does send "stuff" to Google by default? That pretty much justifies everyone's concerns then.

GNOME Deskbar

[somegeekynick]

That's enough for me. I have a Firefox Extension to have an eye on my GMail accounts.

But why their own repositories?

[DoofusOfDeath]

I installed it, and I had two apparent choices:
(A) directly download the .deb file and install it using dpkg, or
(B) Add Google's signing key and repositories to my system, and then use APT to retrieve and install the package.

Does anyone know why Google didn't just add this to the standard Debian repositories? Maybe because the software isn't considered ready for prime-time yet? I don't see the average new Ubuntu user feeling comfortable with the installation techniques Google currently supports.

Re:But why their own repositories?

[gomoX]

Huh?

a) People don't just "add stuff to the Debian repositories". Debian Package Maintainers do, after a looong boring process.
b) Even if they did, having stuff in the Debian repositories doesn't make it available for Ubuntu users, which have their one separate reps.

Still this will probably make it to debian non-free and ubuntu multiverse at some not-too-distant point.

Re:But why their own repositories?

[x102output]

"I don't see the average new Ubuntu user feeling comfortable with the installation techniques Google currently supports." you mean clicking on a .deb file URL link, selecting "open", and pressing an "install" button? (oh yeah, and entering a super-user password) seems pretty easy to me. about the same steps as installing on windows. This is why I think Ubuntu really has a chance in being THE linux desktop. the repo instructions were there for people who wanted other options.

Re:But why their own repositories?

[Goodgerster]

Google cannot just add software to the Debian repositories. The software must be licensed as redistributable (or needs a wrapper to download it) to make it into non-free, and must be licensed to comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (e.g. must be free software/open source) to make it into main (or restricted, if it is dependent upon non-free extras.)

Greater Need...

[Lanboy]

The real cleverness of the Google desktop is how it indexes the info in all those proprietary Microsoft formats like outlook, word and excel. It helps make being forced to live in a corporate environment livable. I'm sure you think this is a bad thing.

People who have been able to make Linux fit their wold, or perhaps their world fit Linux, can do a grep -r to find a lot of such info.

Google has made a solid effort to support their products on open source platforms, I am sure they are putting far more resources into this than can be explained by open source market share.

Whether they do this out of benevolence or greed is a matter for debate, but if the Microsoft monopoly is ever broken it will likely be due to Google.

nice! but...

[luncheon]

will it run linux??^H^H^H^H ah, nevermind

In Soviet China,

[monkville]

Google Desktop searches you!!!!

Meep

[Nushio]

I'm sorry, but the person you're trying to reach isn't available. Please leave a message after the meep. Meep

Who cares..

[LingNoi]

I would much rather have GTalk with full VOIP and voice mail then some lame desktop search when Linux already has so many ways to search already.

If GTalk was released for Ubuntu it would be the killer app to have since everyone is restricted to using Skype. I would even pay for a fully working GTalk on Linux.

Re:Who cares..

[Anonymous Coward]

Gizmo Project is better than Skype.

Re:Privacy - But is it open source?

[N Monkey]

Not really. I've used Google Desktop on Windows and it gives you the option to turn off sending stuff to Google servers.

Meaning that is does send "stuff" to Google by default? That pretty much justifies everyone's concerns then.

IIRC, you are asked when it's first configured. If you are really paranoid, just tell your firewall to block it. You do run a firewall, don't you?

Seriously though, I replaced Google Desktop with Copernic because the latter also allows you to search network drives.

Too much space

[CockroachMan]

I used this on Windows for some time.. then I've found out that it's index was occupying 600MB of my HD! On Linux I'm happy with my " find / -name 'whatever' " :P

Re:Too much space

[TheoMurpse]

Find isn't instantaneous on a 1-2 TB computer, while Google Desktop Search is. GDS is instantaneous because it uses 600MB of space to index files. You can't expect instantaneity to be free of resource costs.

Closed Source

[Anonymous Coward]

When are those rich bastards ever going to actually give any _code_ back to the community that provided them all their wealth and fame? Never apparently.

GoogleOS?

[The MAZZTer]

Maybe this is in preparation for Linux-based GoogleOS? We can only hope.

Re:GoogleOS?

[Vexorian]

hope that it happens or that it doesn't happen? I wouldn't like any Linux distro to become a defacto standard...

What make Linux secure is...

[Comboman]

Yeah but even then, that's when the beauty of Linux kicks in. If someone discovers, for example, a buffer overflow in the app, they're still facing an unknown kernel version, distro filesystem, and GCC version

So you're saying Linux is secure because it's hard to develop for?

Re:What make Linux secure is...

[nschubach]

So you're saying Linux is secure because it's hard to develop for? Not hard to develop for... hard to develop "around".

Division

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't put this on my Linux machine, but I don't mind putting it on my Wintendos machine. I just don't need it on that machine, since it is only for games.

I don't put closed-source games on my Linux machine since some of them spy on me. WoW, for example, includes "The Warden" which scans your hard drive for hacks. My Linux machine is my "secure" machine where I do serious work (not just development, but also online investing and similar), so nothing closed-source is allowed (including Google desktop search).

Personally, I think more people should do this sort of thing. Having two computers is more expensive, but it keeps your important data safe while still giving you all the entertainment value you want.

Loud and Clear

[newr00tic]

I [clearly and properly] read you by the use of my OSX desktop.

Re:Privacy - But is it open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will never be open source because it uses Google's search algorithms. However, if you want to see if it ever "phones home" you could always just run a network traffic analyzer like wireshark.

And by the way, the option to turn "sending stuff" off is non-personal data anyways. Under that checkbox in the preferences, it says "Non-personal usage data and crash reports may be sent to Google to improve Desktop."

So, they don't claim to collect any personal data - the index is stored locally. And if you really don't trust them, you could just check to see if it's phoning home.

Source code ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would any Linux distro user want to install a binary program from another company ? How would you know what's inside or what it is doing ?
Wasn't the main reason you switched to a Linux distrib so that you had your freedom back and good examine the code ?

Re:Source code ?

[pandrijeczko]

Why would any Linux user need a desktop search tool anyhow?

Bearing in mind that *most* stuff on Linux is in plain text anyhow, the standard text tools like grep, awk and sed, along with good use of find is more than enough - get to grip with a few regular expressions and it can beat any single binary hands down.

It's not that Google desktop for Linux is binary, more that it's redundant.

Re:Source code ?

[AusIV]

I was thrilled to see Google desktop was available for Linux. It was one of the few things I missed from Windows. I've tried Beagle, but I found it to be a horrible resource hog, and it wasn't particularly useful.

As far as Linux files being plain text, searching plain text files barely brushes the surface. Google Desktop indexes pictures, web history, Gmail (for the rare occasion I don't have web access to read my e-mail), OpenOffice and MS Office documents, the list goes on. Plus the results show up in your typical Google search, making them quickly and easily available. It's not a resource hog, and it's results show up without even having to look for them.

Lastly, I've never been overly concerned about binary programs. I avoid binary kernel drivers, but I use flash, VMWare, and a few other proprietary user-space apps. If I have any reason to suspect foul play, it's easy enough to get rid of.

Anyone who's paranoid about binary blobs or having their desktop searched is welcome not to install it, but I for one am quite pleased that Google decided to make a Linux version.

Google Desktop menu item

[seanmeister]

Thank you, Google, for creating a "Google Desktop" menu category in the root of my Gnome menu. It is *so* much easier to find applications organized by name, as opposed to being organized by the general function (eg, "Games", "Graphics", etc)

sudo apt-get remove google-desktop-linux

Re:Google Desktop menu item

[advocate_one]

You're lucky... on my KDE, it parked the menu entries in the Lost & Found section??? how weird is that?

Re:Google Desktop menu item

[hotani]

I win. Xfce put it in "Other."

Re:Google Desktop menu item

[chamont]

Yeah, try installing it on Ubuntu. There's no menu item anywhere in any category (at least that I can tell).

Beagle sucks

[a1mint]

I've found it to crash and cause overloads, somehow blocking other operations.

I can't figure out for the life of me why Redhat installs and enables Beagle by default. We're dealing with an experimental VM here.

It would have been much better to have written it in Java. Now that Java is available for redistribution in Linux distros, it makes sense to rewrite Beagle in Java, and this time with no bugs, and better implementation.

Re:Privacy - But is it open source?

[Grifty]

I use Google Desktop to search and index network drives/folders all the time in Windows.
You just have to map the drive first, and refer to it as a "lettered" drive rather than by its universal share name. IE: "X:\FOLDER\"

Is this not the case for the Linux Google Desktop?
(And if not, why? I am a bit of a Linux n00b)

I think you meant to say

[thegnu]

"Your analogy is like a soup kitchen."

Thank you! Thank you!

Google search engine = bad searches & spam

[zymano]

Why is there a stinking google newsbit on slashdot every few days.

I find their searches are becoming more WORTHLESS and filled with BUSINESS SPAMMING THEIR SHIT. I am finding less information and more "Buy this book if you need this info" or I am being clandestinely lured to sites that are commercial which i don't want. This shouldn't surprise anyone. They are out to make more money so they probably have tilted rankings to crappy businesses or maybe their search engine sucks a little less than yahoo.

Re:Google This! - shameless website plug

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop replying to the first post.

All proprietary software is insecure by default.

[jbn-o]

Absolutely, that is the logical and proper conclusion. On my machines I run nothing but free software. I see no point in distinguishing between proprietary software when it comes my software freedom and related issues such as privacy; there's nothing preventing a drawing program from silently indexing my system and sharing a copy of that index with the proprietor (which can then be passed on to who knows whom in a way I'd have no technical means to stop or examine).

Trojan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has unpacked the rpm version and checked it with clamav and avast. It looks like we have a trojan in it: http://betenoire.jogger.pl/2007/06/28/trojan-w-goo gle-desktop-dla-linuksa/ (it's in Polish, but scan log is most important here).

Re:Beagle - installed wrong?

[catfoo]

Beagle runs much better if you are using extended attributes, http://beagle-project.org/FAQ "Do I really need extended attributes? It is strongly recommended. There is an sqlite-based fallback in place, but using this as the primary store is slow and noticably degrades performance. Note that, with extended attributes. beagle will use some extra space for storing the attributes of each file. It depends on the filesystem how much is used for each attribute and it is a small amount. However, it can add up to some 10s of MBs for several GBs of files. Also, writing extended attributes changes the ctime of a file; this might cause problem if you are using any backup utility that compares ctime to backup changed files. If you want to run with extended attributes disabled, set the environment variale BEAGLE_DISABLE_XATTR. Keep in mind that beagle will run slower with extended attribute disabled. "

block outgoing connections

[gr8dude]

Come on, that's nonsense; how about using a firewall to block any outgoing connection initiated by this utility's process?

I usually do know...

[Hymer]

...where I save my pr0n...

Yay!!!

[martin_henry]

google software can finally infect my linux partition as well.

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