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Google Desktop Now on Linux

Posted by samzenpus on from the yes-it-does-run-linux dept.

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."

6 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Here's the link. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  2. Beagle by prock307 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

    1. Re:Beagle by oever · · Score: 4, Informative
      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.

      --
      DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
  3. Re:Spousal Abuse by Xenex · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  4. Re:slocate? by LiquidFire_HK · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.)

  5. it does by oni · · Score: 4, Informative

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