Google desktop has now been made available for Linux
You can peruse the documentation or download the files from the Linux version of the site.
As should be expected there are both RPM versions (RedHat and derivatives) and .debs (for Ubuntu / Debian).
I’m not sure how useful this would be, as the only time I need to conduct search is with email and thunderbird handles that really well (and quickly too!).
Of course the problem with a Google bit of software on a machine running Linux could be the license.
While the software may use some open source libraries it’s not open source itself
Tom Doyle says
In repsonse to your comment about how useful it will be. I can safely say you will see a much better user experience for searching emails than what you’d expct from thunderbird.
That is of course if they have made it the same as the windows version!
The best bit about Google Desktop though, is the double tapping of the ctrl button…. aahhhh I love it…. 🙂
michele says
Tom
That’s from a windows perspective 🙂
On Linux searching Thunderbird (over IMAP) takes a couple of seconds and I don’t have to wait for any indexing.
If I have a chance I’ll install it on one of my Linux desktops to see what it’s like
Michele
AG says
Why not simply use Beagle? It is fairly ubiquitous these days, and can be installed with minimal effort (even on Slackware).
michele says
AG – I was interested in comparing the Windows and Linux versions of Google desktop, as I’d found that it was a real performance killer on windows
I’ll look into Beagle – thanks for the link
Michele