| Google Desktop arrives on Linux |
Jun. 27, 2007
 Google has finally released a long-awaited native Linux application: Google Desktop for Linux. As with the already shipping OS X and Windows versions, Google Desktop enables Linux users to search for text inside documents, local email messages, their Web history, and their Gmail accounts.
This first beta version doesn't offer the sidebar and gadgets, which are found in other versions of the application. Those will come later, according to a Google representative, who stated, "We focused most of our efforts on desktop search. Gadgets and sidebar are not supported, but will probably be added in the future."
Google offers a variety of options for setting up the new search program
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More setup options
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The first version supports many popular versions of Linux. It comes in the form of both RPM and a DEB distribution packages. The RPM can be installed on Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Mandriva distributions. The DEB will install on Debian and Ubuntu systems. The program works with both KDE and GNOME.
Officially, Google Desktop is supported on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, and Red Flag 5. It should work, however, on any modern Linux that has glibc 2.3.2+ and gtk+ 2.2.0+ installed. For example, it also worked on MEPIS 6.5, even though Google doesn't mention compatibility with that distribution. At this time, it only supports PCs with 32-bit x86 compatible processors.
This is far from Google's first offering for the increasingly popular Linux desktop. Google already offers Picasa, its basic photo-editing and display program, Google Earth, and the Google Toolbar for Firefox on Linux platform.
Google Desktop Search in action
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Google Desktop for Linux is based on Google's own desktop search algorithms. As such, it is not an open-source program. A Google representative also said that the program is not built on existing Linux search programs, such as Novell engineer Nat Friedman's popular Beagle search program.
The application was developed by Google's Beijing engineering team. It is currently available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.
As has been its custom, Google has not announced a release date for the final shipping version of Google Desktop for Linux. The beta is available now for download from the Google Desktop website. The site also includes detailed directions on how to install and run the program on a variety of Linux distributions.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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