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Finally! Ubuntu will add fast indexed search (Tracker) to Gutsy Gibbon!

lists.ubuntu.com — Another alpha release is due next Thursday, to present the recent advancements to the world: new Gnome 2.19.6, ConsoleKit and fast-user-switch-applet, ****tracker by default*****, KDE 4 beta 1, and more. Ubuntu finally adds a competitor to OS X's Spotlight search and Vista's Instant Search. Interesting that they chose Tracker over Beagle.

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 6, 2007

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  • bettermentflux, on 10/10/2007, -5/+41Good choice. I've had better performance, using less resources and fewer problems with Tracker than with Beagle. The downside to Tracker was that it indexed fewer filetypes, but I read somewhere recently (on Digg, of course) that Tracker has just added new files to its repertoire.
  • bettermentflux, on 10/10/2007, -3/+33Tracker was developed for low spec systems. The docs suggest that typical RAM usage is between 3-9 MB and my experience shows that to be realistic.

    The indexing scheduler seems to be fair, in the sense that it's a good trade off: won't slowdown the system while you need it, indexes quickly when your computer is otherwise idle.

    I'm not sure about integration with other command line tools but I do know that it comes with tagging, query and search command line tools of its own.

    I'm no expert of the subject, however. You may want to take a look at the MetaTracker project site for more info than I have: http://www.gnome.org/projects/tracker/features.html
  • sloppychris, on 10/10/2007, -4/+29I didn't know KDE 4 was shipping with Gutsy.
  • kazamx, on 10/10/2007, -4/+19I assume it ships with kbuntu, if it were with Ubuntu that would be one HUGE change :-)
  • sumguy231, on 10/10/2007, -3/+16It's probably worth noting for the Kubuntu fans out there that Kubuntu Gutsy already includes Strigi, the KDE equivalent of this.
  • CJChesterson, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14AFAIK, locate/updatedb just index filenames, not the actual contents of the files. Tracker/Beagle/Spotlight etc actually index the content of the file - and type - so you can search for email, chat logs, or whatever. So, to answer your question - how is it better? It's a more detailed index.
  • skyshock1, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12Don't be an elitist, you can just as easily compile software from source using Ubuntu as you can any other distro.
  • prammy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11KDE4 beta will be.
  • ScreaminIke, on 10/10/2007, -3/+11you're hard to pin down. glad that i friend-stalk you, though. always give me something to think about......
  • realyst, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9It's Linux....in a way ALL of it is third party. Unless you think Linus or Stallman himself made Ubuntu.

    It's the fact that it's created by the masses that makes it Linux.
  • stmiller, on 10/10/2007, -5/+13All configuration in Ubuntu can be done without ever opening a terminal.
  • benanzo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8It's an announcement that Tracker will be installed by default in the next release. Nothing more. It is interesting to watch what technologies/packages successful GNU/Linux communities choose as defaults because of their technical superiority/stability. In this case Tracker over Beagle. This is interesting news for millions of Ubuntu users. Get over yourself.
  • skyshock1, on 10/10/2007, -2/+10Good. Beagle was a really nasty memory hog.
  • whoaminow, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8The first link in the body of this article, should be https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackageInconsistencies not https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackageInconsistencies. (the period messed it up on the site).

    When you go to the correct link, it takes you to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment#Consistency
  • sirhomer, on 10/10/2007, -6/+13Some examples?
  • benanzo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8It's just an announcement that Tracker will be *default*. Anyone can install it right now if they want. I'm really glad Slackware is still around BTW.
  • benanzo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Why are you so disdainful of Ubuntu? An awful lot of people have found a never-before-discovered passion about Free software (including Linux) because of Ubuntu's promise and astounding progress in the industry. Let users be users. Not everyone should give a ***** about what scheduler is timing their processes. But they do care if they can hit ALT-F2 and search their e-mails and files in real time. You're judgments are misguided.
  • ordminute, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Bear in mind that you won't ever hear Apple or MS talk about what they've borrowed from the free-software world (esp Linux). Linux however, is not hung-up about appearing to be an innovative OS. Yet, in many ways, it is pioneering on the desktop - not just in the server space.

    Probably the most notable one would be Virtual Desktops (aka OS/X's 'spaces'). Linux has had this for around 10 years.

    Beagle was the first fast-indexing search tool in existence, started development a year or so before Apple.

    The LiveCD feature is now becoming popular with Microsoft also.

    Aside from that it seems that Apple and Windows are playing a little catchup with the 'bling' stuff like Beryl/ CompizFusion.
  • sebzzz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Yes, virtual desktops is one good example.

    And if my informations are good, search tools like tracker where there before the one in windows Vista
  • trogdoor, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Indexes content and meta-data as well as filename.
  • mrsteveman1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7In other words, what it should be doing. Beagle seems to completely screw the system and i end up turning it off completely.
  • Burgundavia, on 10/10/2007, -3/+9Actually, Beagle was released about 6 hours before Spotlight was.
  • bentrop, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6That simply isn't true. I love my Ubuntu but saying that there is a GUI for everything is simply ignorant. There isn't even a simply GUI-Tool to change the default boot-option in GRUB's menu.lst in the default installation.
    Ubuntu has a lot of nice and easy to use GUI-tools to do a lot of configuration without ever even seeing the terminal (and so do most other current distros) but there still is room for improvement and while certain things can not be done or changed at all on other OS some things are easier. NT-Loader has a basic GUI on Windows, GRUB has a basic GUI on Suse etc. there is nothing of that sort on Ubuntu so far.
  • plagiats, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH you moron had to post it, right ? Fock, I'll answer on behalf of others : "locate" command line utility was available LONG LONG time before apple, microsoft, google, or copernic even had the slightest clue about integrating desktop search. Locate runs with a database that indexes itself or that you can reindex using "sudo updatedb" (like "update database"). Locate gives results back in a fraction of seconds. Now please next time you just want to say "oh look ! they copied others!" in a computing environment just think twice. Everybody copies everybody in that industry. Get over it and STFU.
  • TheRealToma, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7Also, not by default.
  • trogdoor, on 10/10/2007, -2/+7I don't see that as a problem as long as kubuntu-desktop does not depend on tracker.
  • benanzo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4How is this not an announcement? An oft cited flaw in the Free software community is a lack of coherency and unified direction (which I disagree with for philosophical reasons.) It is important and considered "news" to a large population of the Free software community because Ubuntu has made a technical decision to push one piece of essential and modern technology over another. People didn't digg the CFS story because they don't know what the hell a process scheduler is. But they know what Spotlight is, and they know that Vista does realtime searching. It's "news" because Gutsy will now do it out-of-the-box as well. Ubuntu gets a lot of press, but that is far from a bad thing. It just means people are excited. sed 's/Ubuntu/Slackware/' -- we all benefit.
  • martalli, on 10/10/2007, -7/+11Take the blue pill, fall asleep and wake up in your own bed.
    Take the brown pill, and find out what is down through the rabbit hole.
  • nanostream, on 10/10/2007, -5/+9To my knowledge osx and windows programs are trying to immitate beryl's features
  • geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4The truth is, Tracker is desktop neutral, it'd be just as easy for someone in the KDE world to create a tool to view Tracker databases, but they haven't AFAIK.
  • MeneerR, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4This is very specific usage.

    1) The kernel tree contains of thousands of small files. Which is why the index takes half the amount of the original data. Its not like indexing an MP3 or anything like that.

    2) The main bottle-neck for the indexer is IO. Which by definition means its fast. It can't index stuff without reading it. In your case, (many small files).

    Solutions:
    1. Use a file-system that's fast with many small text files. Like ReiserFS or Ext4
    2. Turn off indexing of the specific directory where you keep your many small text-files

    The thing is: tracker can't do it any faster. The limitations you've found are specific to the file-system and the sort of data you are working with. It's also something 99,999% of the desktop users won't hit.

    Also you do get something back in return. You can now as-you-type-search for code fragments and see all the files that actually contain that piece of code. Off course full-text-indexing is going to cost you _something_ if you deal with so many small text-files. IRL the small text-files people have do not change often or at all, and certainly not megabytes of it as the same time.




  • r3zonance, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7Doesn't sound much like a competitor to Spotlight or Vista Search, it doesn't have an API for a third-party to create an indexer for their own types, meaining the only way to add an indexable type is to recompile and it currently only does some files, emails and IM conversations.
  • Luchio, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4What about xorg.conf? That's still a pain in the ass to find and configure for new people, and that doesn't have a GUI helper.
  • sqrt7744, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I don't think you know how to interpret memory usage in Linux yet... shared libs are included, etc. Think gtk. This may help:
    http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html
  • luchid, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4How about configuring a PPPoE connection using a USB modem? It''s painful as hell and all done through CLI. It's retarded that I can do it in Windows on 3 clicks and I have to go through hell in Ubuntu to get it going. I still love Ubuntu though.
  • bobcrotch, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6Right.
  • prammy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3http://www.gnomefiles.org/app.php/StartUp_Manager

    Which should be available from the repos AFAIK.
  • projectstartrek, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5I think he means that command-line apps should have a GUI...
  • adila01, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3KDE 4.0 RC2 will be shipped with Gutsy as optional packages
  • anjinash, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5If a software or hardware company has the ability to ruin your life, then your life is probably not worth much to begin with.
  • ejtttje, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I think these new tools hook into the file system calls so their indices get immediate updates, whereas updatedb only runs once a night. So for instance if you run a 'make install' and want to see where the hell it put some particular file you were expecting it to install, it'll show up in the search results.
  • starsky51, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Did you loan a copy of 'Flamebaiting for Dummies' from the library and copy one of the examples?
  • mrsteveman1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I presume tracker runs as a daemon, whereas locate needs updatedb to be run every so often
  • aleander, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Please. I had virtual desktops on HP-UX before I even heard about Linux.

    But, as an idea, Beagle/Dashboard was, AFAIK, first (began long ago, I may have rearranged things). But Mac OS X brought the first mature implementation, I think (but I'm biased, I don't like Google Desktop Search).
  • kettlechips, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5Did they actually remove mono from the default, or are you just over analyzing the choice of Tracker over Beagle?
  • stoffe, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Nope, but Tracker is.
  • Samurailink3, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Look into anti-depressants, weed, or maybe a support system of some sort... ;)
  • zwaldowski, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Works for me, even though I still have the buggy version the freezes FF.

    The only thing I had to do to get everything working with Compiz was to change my video display driver in Totem, VLC, and MPlayer to X11.
  • msgyrd, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Dual booting should be really straightforward. Your HP whatever might have incompatible wireless or p.i.t.a. graphics drivers, but the BIOS and partitioning is almost guaranteed to be compatible. PEBKAC. I read your post on ubuntu forums and you don't seem to have a clue about how to ask for help.
  • 9a3eedi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Tracker seems interesting. Sometimes I get something hogging up my CPU at some random time. I check gnome-system-monitor and I find that it is beagled-helper thats eating it up. Gets annoying sometimes..
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