Robert Love posted in his blog some interesting screenshots: Thanks to beaglefs, a
A Visual Look at BeagleFS
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I just installed it, it works like a charm. I just hope that this gets integrated into the Beagle package and it creates the queries and folders automatically. BeOS Tracker used to do that and it was cool.
Would be nice if you could save queries Tracker-style in Gnome. I have been spoiled by BeOS queries over the years, and it is hard to do without them when using Linux.
Well, you _can_ save searches in Gnome since Nautilus got some search integration. On my FC5 it works with the Beagle backend by default, but in theory the backend is pluggable, and I think a working alternative is the “tracker” project search.
It’s not right there in your face, though, so in the eventuality that it just slipped under your radar:
1) Open any folder, so that you have a Nautilus menu
2) Places > Search (or CTRL+F)
3) Build your query adding the criteria you’re interested in
4) File > Save Search
There, you’ve got your “virtual folder”.
There’s been some discussion on the mailing list about the best way to make this process easier and much more visible to end users.
Of course this is an abstraction at Filemanager level, much different from a FUSE virtual directory, but having a swappable backend has some convenience. We’ll see how it all comes together.
/K
Kitty,
I use Ubuntu, and I don’t seem to find a way to build a query from Places > Search. All this does is open the standard Beagle window, which does not have a File menu.
Maybe Ubuntu is different from Fedora, or am I missing something?
I use Ubuntu, and I don’t seem to find a way to build a query from Places > Search. All this does is open the standard Beagle window, which does not have a File menu.
Just to clarify: if you go Places > Search in the Gnome panel menu, it will indeed open your standard Beagle search.
But what I was referring to was going Places > Search in the menu of _any Nautilus window_, that’s why i said as a first step to open any folder.
That’s one more hint on how poor this current implementation is from a UI point of view is, as two identical menu titles and two identical menu items will lead to very different outcomes.
You should end up with the “query builder” you can see at http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-14/ under “Searching for Love”. You didn’t specify which Ubuntu release you’re using but since the Beagle search is integrated, I assume it will be using Gnome 2.14?
Since the ability to save virtual searches already exists within Nautilus with beagle, what’s the advantage of installing/using beaglefs? Speed?
Eugenia, this is very interesting. Did you compile from source? I am downloading the source files now and will try to get it running. I am a little concerned about the dependency on monodevelop. I hope the monodevelop package in Ubuntu’s Dapper repositories is adequate.
GP
There is no dependency on monodevelop. I just used “make” in the command line.
I love seeing these bits and pieces come together in Linux and show the world how a serious desktop operating system should be.
Linux really does have it all, and for free. Vista-like graphics (before Vista), Spotlight-like searching, a choice of excellent dekstop graphical environments, killer applications for productivity.
If it’s a serious destkop OS than it has to have a lot of games.
I’m very curious about this. If it requires FUSE do I need to enable connector (config_connector) in the kernel or download the source and compile from http://fuse.sourceforge.net ? I’m using Ubuntu 6.06, so I might be able to apt-get the fuse app/lib instead?
What you need to do to use FUSE depends on your kernel version. FUSE is part of Linux 2.6.14 and all later kernels, so it’s in SUSE 10.1 (Linux 2.6.16). I don’t know what kernel version Ubuntu 6.06 has.
Once you have a recent kernel, you need to load the FUSE kernel module:
/sbin/modprobe fuse
You may also need to install the fuse package (that’s the SUSE 10.1 name) to get the fusermount program (to unmount user-space filesystems) and libfuse.so shared library (to allow FUSE-using applications to load).
If you’re going to compile a FUSE program, you’ll also need (of course) fuse-devel (or equivalent) for the header files and compile-time link libraries.