Do I Really Want Beagle??

[Sean Carlos]

David Cary Hart wrote:
> Life was fine without it. Is there something I am missing or is the
> bloat more than the benefit?
> 

Beagle is a document indexing and retrieval tool for desktop search.  It 
is really useful if you have years of documents and mail - you vaguely 
remember that you saw (or wrote!) something on a particular topic, but 
you don't remember where.

Think Google desktop on Windows or Spotlite on a Mac.

If you don't have a lot of documents, it may not be useful.  It is 
definitely not for servers.

Beagle is still young - and sometimes misbehaves.  There are ways to 
mitigate this, such as starting beagle without the indexer when you're 
running a laptop on a battery.

I've followed beagle since the original nrpms.net release for FC3, 
documenting my experience at http://www.antezeta.com/beagle-fedora.html .

FC5 users should skip the installation section, as it is not applicable.

I've not yet extensively investigated FC5 integration - such as the best 
way to autostart beagled and beagle-search.  Is it still 
gnome-session-manager?  Thus, feedback is welcome!

Sean Carlos

http://www.antezeta.it/