Desktop searching with Beagle on KDE

DESKTOP FRIEND

Author(s):

If you have given up hope of ever finding your way around the mess of data on your desktop, a desktop search engine can help you penetrate the gloom. Kerry and KBeaglebar bring the Beagle engine to the KDE desktop.

The Beagle [1] desktop search tool creates an index of files on local drives, letting the user search for information more quickly. The program, which was written in Mono [2], uses the Gtk Sharp (Gtk#) interface, a .NET library for binding to the Gtk+ GUI Toolkit. On the KDE desktop, two programs have risen to the challenge of improving the usability of Beagle: KBeaglebar [3] and Kerry Beagle [4].

Beagle is starting to appear in more Linux distributions, so your version of Linux might already have Beagle. If not, see the September 2005 issue of Linux Magazine [5] for more on setting up Mono and Beagle. Mono is quite extensive and needs a large number of libraries. If you do not have the current Mono version, expect a lengthy download session.