Google Desktop for Linux Released

Google Desktop for Linux has been officially released. It's a real-honest-to-god native linux application, and doesn't use Wine like the Linux version of Picasa.

I've just installed it on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn from the Google Linux software repositories, and while it's currently only indexed about 1 % of my files, my initial tests suggest it is pretty slick ... a quick Ctrl-Ctrl, and up pops the search box. Apart from all the things I'd expect, like indexing the content of pdf files, directories like "/usr/man" are included on the default path list, so I presume it also looks inside man pages. One problem I've noticed so far in my very quick testing is that it seems to not follow symlinks to directories and won't let me add them as paths to index. The effect is that my "/home/perry/documents", which is actually a symlink to a larger partition, does not get indexed unless I add it to the path list with it's real path.

While there are already similar offerings for Gnome (eg Beagle) and KDE (eg Kat), my gut feeling is that Google Desktop will be my preferred option for the moment. Maybe one day we will get lucky, and Google will even make it FOSS (not holding my breath though).