Google Desktop Now on Linux 293
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."
Spousal Abuse (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Distributed Desktop Search (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
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:I think I'll wait (Score:2, Interesting)
That sounded too 'marketing', I feel sick.
Hmmm (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Spousal Abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
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:QT, GTK or Mono? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html [google.com]
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:Spousal Abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
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:I think I'll wait (Score:2, Interesting)
Finally, and Amen! (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Google Desktop menu item (Score:3, Interesting)
sudo apt-get remove google-desktop-linux
Re:Obsession with search (Score:3, Interesting)
find ~/documents/2007-0[456]* -print0 | xargs -0 grep -Li "minimize risk"
Re:QT, GTK or Mono? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Privacy (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [beagle-project.org]... 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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.