Do you feel lucky today? You should, if you use one of the popular Linux distributions that can be easily found these days, because Google has just released its miraculous Desktop Search software for Linux-based systems. The Google Desktop application comes now in a beta version and its purpose is the same as in Windows and Mac OS, namely that of enabling Linux users to search for many file types, such as:

￭ Gmail
￭ Text files and source code
￭ PDF and PS files
￭ HTML files
￭ Email from Thunderbird
￭ OpenOffice.org documents
￭ Image and music files
￭ Man pages and Info pages
￭ File and folder names



The Google official states:

"We focused most of our efforts on desktop search. Gadgets and sidebar are not supported, but will probably be added in the future."

Another important aspect related to this application is that it is based entirely on Google's own desktop search algorithms and not on existing Linux search programs, therefore its source code will not be open.

The program works very well with both KDE and GNOME and it is supported by some famous Linux distros, coming as RPM and DEB distribution packages for Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Mandriva distributions (RPM) and Debian and Ubuntu (DEB).

Among Google Desktop Search's features, we can mention:

￭ Quick Search Box
￭ Search Your Gmail and Web History
￭ Familiar Results
￭ Smart Indexing
￭ Google Integration
￭ File Versioning
￭ Multi-Language Support



You can download and install Google Desktop software right now from Softpedia.

Here are some quick installation instructions for Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora/RedHat/Mandriva/openSUSE Linux distributions:

Google Desktop on Debian/Ubuntu

Download the deb package, save it in your home folder. Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal for GNOME users or KMenu -> System -> Konsole for KDE users) and type the following code:


Google Desktop on Fedora/RedHat/Mandriva/openSUSE

Download the rpm package, save it in your home folder. Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal for GNOME users or KMenu -> System -> Konsole for KDE users) and type the following code as root: