For several months Google Desktop has been my main desktop search tool. I prefer it to Beagle because I find it to be less obtrusive in terms of resource use. However, recently I ran into problems after installing Dillo. For some reason, Google Desktop decided to adopt Dillo as the default browser but unfortunately Dillo worked like crap with Google Desktop and what's more, I was unable to change the Google Desktop preferences to select another browser as the default. So I thought I might be able to make the necessary changes in some configuration file to be found, perhaps, in /opt/google. But no such luck. There wasn't a single editable configuration file in sight. So, am I right in assuming that Google Desktop doesn't come with any editable configuration files whatsoever?

http://desktop.google.com/support/li...90&topic=11378

These instructions for setting the default browser work for Ubuntu using the gnome environment, so they should work for Debian as well.

update-alternatives -config x-www-browser and select the browser you want to use, may need to also do update-alternatives -config sensible-browser.

Slight correction to above is "update-alternatives --config x-www-browser"

Thanks, people. I did as makuyl/craigevil suggested (update-alternatives --config x-www-browser), I chose Iceweasel, and now Google Desktop opens up in Opera! Go figure . Anyway, Kerry-Beagle has grown on me in the meantime and I think I'm going to stick with it.

Dude! Now Kerry-Beagle is all messed up – I seem to have borked it after I installed Strigi. Google-desktop is still messed up. So it looks like it’s back to good ol’ ‘updatedb’ and ‘locate’ for me. I don’t mind. Updatedb is fast. Now I just have to dig up my notes on how to create a cron job (for updatedb)

I spoke too soon! Updatedb was really hammering my system, even after I reniced it (to 19). So, it looks like it’s back to Beagle!

I tested most of search and indexing tools and I found recoll to be the best of them. it is fast and has more accurate results. the most important about it is you can configure multiple instances to run the gui with different conf files about what and where to index!. I can keep a session for my man pages, another for my books. another for my scripts and code, ...etc. keeping the index inside a db directory next to the source gives a very useful portability. It has editable configuration files that can configure almost every thing it is doing. give it a try.

Thanks Ophidion. I've actually been using recoll/xapian for the last two years. That was a really old post!