Google Releases Desktop Search for Linux
Bookmark on del.icio.us or FurlGoogle has released a beta version of their desktop search program for Linux. Appropriately titled Google Desktop for Linux, this is a native Linux version of the same software that has up until now only been available for Windows.
There are some differences between the Linux and Windows versions. Taking a quick look at the features page for the Linux version, there is one major feature that apparently has not made it into the Linux version — the sidebar and gadgets. For those of you who haven’t run the Windows version of Google Desktop, the sidebar is exactly that — a bar that sits on the side of your screen and contains what Google calls gadgets. These are small programs that attach themselves to the sidebar and perform simple tasks like displaying the current weather, rss feeds and even playing some simple games like Reversi. Having run the Windows version in the past, I think not having the sidebar in the Linux version is a good thing. I’ve found the sidebar to be bloated, slow, and crash prone and I always end up disabling it.
Currently, Google Desktop for Linux has been approved for the following Linux distributions:
- Debian 4.0
- Fedora Core 6
- Ubuntu 6.10
- SUSE 10.1
- Red Flag 5
They say approved for these distributions, but it appears from the system requirements on the help page that it will run on any Linux distribution that has a version 2.4 Linux Kernel along with glibc 2.3.2, XFree86-3.3.6, gtk+2.2 and fontconfig/xft. I have yet to try it out, but I’ll be downloading and installing it tonight on Ubuntu and I will post a review tomorrow.
Technorati Tags: Linux, Google, Desktop Search, Windows, Open Source
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