Linux Desktop Search
Desktop search has come a long way these last couple of years, instead of waiting on slow search systems, we now have indexing applications that can find our files in a flash. Here I’ll present you with various options in the Linux world.
Also see: 5 ways to find files in Linux (on the command line)
Beagle (Home) is a search system for Linux and other such modern Unix-like systems, enabling the user to search documents, chat logs, email and contact lists in a similar way to Spotlight in Mac OS X, or Google Desktop under Microsoft Windows.
Beagle grew out of Dashboard, an early Mono based application for watching for and presenting useful information from a user’s computer. It is written in C# using Mono and uses a port of Lucene to C# called Lucene.Net as its indexer. Beagle includes a Gtk#-based user interface, and integrates with Galago for presence information.
If you prefer a KDE based front end don’t forget to get Kerry along with Beagle.
Beagle indexes the following:
- Applications
- Archives (zip, tar, gzip, bzip2) and their contents
- Conversations (Gaim, Kopete and IRC logs)
- Documents (AbiWord, OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office, pdf, txt, rtf, html)
- Emails and Address Book contacts (from Evolution, Mozilla Thunderbird, and KMail)
- Help files (Texinfo, man pages)
- Images (png, jpg, tiff, gif, svg)
- Music files (mp3, ogg, flac)
- Notes taken in Tomboy, KNotes, and Labyrinth
- RSS feeds (via Blam, Liferea or Akregator)
- Source code (C, C++, C#, Fortran, Java, JavaScript, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, and more)
- Video files (through MPlayer or Totem)
- Web history (Firefox, Konqueror, Epiphany)
Beagle is required for the new Kickoff menu created by OpenSuse, as well as comes installed by default in openSuse. The downside to Beagle, while it does an excellent job is it a bit heavier than most desktop searches for linux and has many dependencies on Mono, which some for various reasons aren’t big fans of. I personally use Beagle though.
Strigi (Home)- Strigi is a daemon which uses a very fast and efficient crawler that can index data on your harddrive. Indexing operations are performed without hammering your system, this makes Strigi the fastest and smallest desktop searching program.
Strigi can index different file formats, including the contents of the archive files. Strigi is typicaly for the KDE desktop environment and has integration with Kicker and Konqueror. It comes installed by default on Kubuntu.
KDE users have a convenient way to access all strigi functionality (search and configuration) via strigi:/ KIO. Just type “strigi:/” into Konqueror address bar.
Tracker (Home) – Tracker is a lightweight tool designed to extract information and metadata about your personal data so that it can be searched easily and quickly. It’s for the Gnome desktop and integrates well with Pidgin and Evolution to search your chats and emails along with all your files. Tracker is included by default in Ubuntu.
Google Desktop (Home) – Google desktop integrates nicely with Firefox, Konqueror, or your browser of choice as well as the panels for multiple desktop environments. Unfortunately, unlike the other desktop searches mentioned here, it is a closed source application. The web interface should be familiar to those who used it in Windows so it does make for a smoother transition to new comers to linux.
Recoll (Home) If you are looking for a lightweight and easy-to-use yet powerful desktop search engine, you might want to try Recoll. Unlike Beagle, Recoll doesn’t require Mono, it’s fast, and it’s highly configurable. Recoll is based on Xapian, a mature open source search engine library that supports advanced features such as phrase and proximity search, relevance feedback, document categorization, boolean queries, and wildcard search.
Recoll can handle plain text, HTML, OpenOffice.org documents, Mozilla Thunderbird and Evolution email messages, and Lyx and Scribus files. In addition to those native formats, Recoll can also work with other file types by using external helper applications. For example, the Xpdf software provides support for PDF files, while Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents are handled by Antiword and catdoc. If you want to enable support for document types that require external helpers, you have to install the helper apps separately using your distro’s package manager (a list of the required external helpers is available at Recoll’s Web site.
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