IT News & Technology update

The first public beta of Google Desktop for Linux is now available for download. Released yesterday, this early beta only supports a limited subset of Google Desktop functionality. Google's previous efforts to port desktop applications to Linux have been hit or miss. The current Google Desktop for Linux beta only offers search and versioning functionality and doesn't support other features like the Google sidebar or widgets, but the work done so far is very good. Unlike Picasa, which used Wine, the Google Desktop port is entirely native.

I use Ubuntu, so I was able to install Google Desktop using the Deb package provided by Google. In addition to making packages available for download, Google also conveniently hosts its own package repositories for a handful of distributions. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like a generic binary tarball is available at this time, so those who aren't using a supported distribution are going to have to wait or find a way to adapt the available packages. Google Desktop installs to /opt/google/desktop and the user-specific data is all stored in ~/.google/desktop.

After installation, Google Desktop will start automatically when the computer boots. Users can also launch Google Desktop manually by selecting it from the KDE or GNOME applications menu or by running the gdlinux command with the "start" parameter from the command-line. Google Desktop begins indexing immediately after it is launched and it will also attempt to install a Firefox plug-in (libdesktop.so).

Like Google Desktop for Windows, the Linux version will also integrate local file search results into conventional Google searches performed in the user's web browser. Google Desktop searches can also be performed with the quick search interface, which is activated by hitting control twice. The quick search interface uses an attractive-looking shaped window, and the result text is very easy to read and displayed at an appropriate size.

In terms of performance and stability, I don't really have any major complaints. I've noticed that Google Desktop eats too much CPU sometimes, and it also tends to slow down file write operations a little bit, but it seems reliable enough for daily use. It seems to index at a relatively decent rate, but its indexing statistics are a bit nebulous and inconsistent. When I launch the index info view from the Notification Area icon context menu, the time estimates for indexing and the percentage of indexing completed seemed to vary widely over short periods of time and didn't consistently provide useful information.

Desktop Linux integration

At the present time, Google Desktop for Linux doesn't provide much integration with the rest of the Linux desktop ecosystem, but it does enough to be useful in its current state. The most important integration point is application selection. When I open a file through Google Desktop, it respects my GNOME settings and launches the appropriate programs. For instance, I have text files configured to open in GVim instead of Gedit. Google Desktop consistently uses the right program.

There is only one instance I encountered during my testing where Google Desktop doesn't use my default program to display content. Google Desktop properly indexes all of my Evolution e-mail, but when I open an e-mail message through the Google Desktop search results, it displays a cached version of the message right in the browser rather than opening the specific e-mail in an Evolution window. In some ways, that's actually advantageous because it allows the user to view e-mail content even when their e-mail program isn't running. That said, I'd still prefer to be able configure Google Desktop to display e-mail messages within Evolution. On Windows, this is at least possible with Outlook.

When Google desktop is running, an icon appears in the GNOME Notification Area that will display the Google Desktop quick search box when double-clicked. The icon also has a simple right-click context menu that provides access to Google Desktop's settings. When the user selects "Preferences" from the Notification Area icon's right-click menu, the Google Desktop configuration interface will load in the user's default web browser.