So, I got my SUSE 10.0 up and running few days ago, updated KDE to 3.4.3 without any problems, and all that was available via Gnome supplementary repository, including beagle and related updates. Today I decided to try out Beagle that comes with SUSE 10.0. Here is a brief introduction to Beagle:

Beagle is a search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you’re looking for. Beagle can search in many different domains.

Using Beagle, you can easily find:

• documents
• emails
• web history
• IM/IRC conversations
• source code
• images
• music files
• applications

The great thing that I have noticed is that Beagle now supports indexing of KMail …. awesome! Here is a proof from debug when I ran “beagled” for the first time:

INFO: Guessing for location of KMail folders ... found at 

/home/me/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail

Before it only supported Evolution for e-mails. The irony is that with 10.0 I decided to switch to Thunderbird for my e-mail management, and it is not supported. I had a chat at beagle’s irc channel, and “dBera” told me that they have no information as of today when Thunderbird will also be supported.

I asked him few questions that I was interested in. One thing that I really dislike about beagle’s code is that it depends on libraries that come with Mozilla browser. Since I am a Firefox users, I really don’t like having two browsers. Same is true for Evolution, as now I am using Thunderbird and wouldn’t like to have another e-mail client just lying there cause other application requires it to be installed, same as many KDE applications require Kontact (which has KMail) to be present, though I am not using it. But since KMail is now supported, I am thinking of switiching back to it. I really don’t want to, but Beagle being able to index KMail is a very strong argument for me.

So, regarding the Mozilla at least, I got the answer from “dBera”. He told me that a new UI is in development, and once it’s completed we will not be required to have Mozillla or even Firefox installed (this is especially good for users who prefer other browsers, such as Opera). For Evolution package this is TRUE as of current version of Beagle, but it seems that package makers for SUSE 10.0 are still including them as dependencies. “dBera” mentioned that he has his beagle running without Evolution package and that beagle dependencies are gradually decreasing. So, in the near future, if you don’t use these and other applications, you’ll be able to safely remove them.This is great news, at least for me.

What I found in Beagle (once updated via Gnome supplemetary repository) in conjunction with SUSE 10.0 is that it runs superbly. According to their site, they feel comfortable in recommending it for everyday use. And I can confirm that it really is. That said, it is still beta software, and you should not expect it to be bug free, heavy-duty production-quality software quite yet. It now supports indexing of KMail, is way stable than previous versions and a new feature know as “beagle-settings” (which aids in adding other folders to be indexed, apart from your home folder or partition, is available via a GUI interface), and since SUSE 10.0 is being shipped with inotify-enabled kernel, as in previous releases a patch was required, now makes Beagle REALLY COOL and SMOOTH.

P.S. Special thanks to “dBera” for answering to my questions.

Continued in “Running Beagle on SUSE 10.0 - Part 2″

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