Tracker or Beagle?

[50words]

Which do you prefer, and why?

There are a couple other threads with a similar subject, but no poll. I'm curious to see the results.

I gave Tracker a good try, but it just doesn't find what I need. For example, I type in the name of a client in Tracker, and I get one unrelated result. If I type in the name of the same client in Beagle, I get nearly one hundred results (including the unrelated one) based on the contents of those files, not just the metadata that may have been placed on the file. (As an attorney, I routinely purge metadata, anyway, lest my opponents get more than just the document.)

For me, Beagle is easily the better choice.

[Zelut]

I don't use either and when I need to search for something I use find.. nobody has been able to sell me on these fancy indexers yet, but maybe I'm old-school.

[p_quarles]

I voted "neither." I used to be a big fan of Google Desktop in Windows, but more and more I find myself remembering to organize my files in a way that makes them easy to find later.

If I needed to keep track of a larger number of files, though, I'd have to do things differently.

[smartboyathome]

I use Google Desktop on Linux. It is far supperior to either of the ones listed.

[50words]

I use Google Desktop on Linux. It is far supperior to either of the ones listed.

Good point. As a lawyer with sensitive client information, using a search tool that shares information with a third party (Google) is not an option for me. But I probably should have included Google Desktop in the poll.

[tbroderick]

find & grep

[FuturePilot]

I'd go with Tracker.

[Depressed Man]

I use Google Desktop on Linux. It is far supperior to either of the ones listed.

If only they had a better results interface. :(

[runningwithscissors]

locate.

[Incense]

If beagle didn't bog my system down, then I would vote for it hands down. Makes finding notes you took in class very easy. I love searching documents, without having to open them. However, it slows my system down too much, so I don't use it. Honestly I have not really given tracker a fair go, but I'd rather just remember where I put my stuff, and save the CPU cycles for kdenlive or gimp.

[runningwithscissors]

.

[23meg]

Tracker. With better integration into GNOME in the upcoming releases, and some more bug fixes and performance improvements, it's going to rock (as if it didn't already).

Why?


It does what it's supposed to do
I have a real, concrete need for what it's supposed to do; it's not a "luxury"
Spends way less resources and does its job more elegantly than the rivals
Free software

[peedeeramone]

i dont know, i used to have beagle installed on feisty, but i rarely used it. when i did i believe it worked fine. now i have tracker in gusty, and i want to use it, but when i search for just about anything, it usually doesnt give me anything except the option to search for it on the internet...:confused:

i dont know maybe i dont have it set up right or something

[Xanatos Craven]

If only they had a better results interface. :(
Sure beats the hell out of having to even look at the KDE3-Strigi in Kubuntu 7.10.

[dada1958]

Quicksilver:)

[Masoris]

Search result of Beagle is better than tracker, Although Beagle's index speed is slower. So I use Beagle :)

[timzak]

I don't use either and when I need to search for something I use find.. nobody has been able to sell me on these fancy indexers yet, but maybe I'm old-school.

+1

I don't have a need. I know where my documents are located. In the rare case I need to find a configuration file in the root filesystem, Find (or Search - whatever it's called) in the Locations menu works perfectly. For me it's just a waste of hard drive space and cpu cycles.

[gn2]

I like Catfish.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

Oddly, I have found Beagle to perform better than Tracker of late. I definitely remember it being really heavy on resources when it was young, but now I just don't notice its presence until I use it, at which point I notice that the thing has magically indexed my entire home folder without me noticing. I think this may be because I don't have any crazy options to screw up; with Tracker, I could never figure out how to make it be unobtrusive in the background, and it presents control of details like the nice value. Rather odd, given that Beagle is able to just magically stay out of the way without me needing to touch a thing. I could just be using it wrong, but that's fine with me; I like Beagle's search tool, anyway, so just as long as it works well, I needn't mind the rest.

I love being able to type a complex search phrase, with and / ors, phrases and specific file type. I also agree that it gives very rich results. I have taken to using Beagle as my means of finding relevant programming examples (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=856690), and it has yet to fail me.

[pluviosity]

Neither. I'm waiting to see if Nepomuk+Strigi in KDE4 will be any good when finished, but for now, I organize my files or find them with the terminal.

[andrek]

updatedb + locate

[Polygon]

beagle is slower, and its index files range in the gigabytes range (for my 40 gb hard drive, its index was 2 gb)

and then for tracker, its faster for me, has more detailed searches, has thumbnails for pictures, installed by default, supported by gnome, can add tags and metadata, and the index is tiny compared to beagle.

+1 tracker

[hanzomon4]

+1

I don't have a need. I know where my documents are located. In the rare case I need to find a configuration file in the root filesystem, Find (or Search - whatever it's called) in the Locations menu works perfectly. For me it's just a waste of hard drive space and cpu cycles.

Does that really matter on a system an indexer like tracker or beagle is going to be used on? What do you do with your computer that would make you care about wasted cpu cycles? What are cpu cycles?

[chris4585]

beagle is awesome, it finds everything i need. tracker does... umm.. doesnt do a good job of finding things

[bikeboy]

The only thing I'm waiting for in Tracker is more refined search capabilities. It always finds the files containing what I'm after, but I need to be able to narrow things further. I get too many results for many queries. The main reason for this is I have hundreds of PDF files organised into general categories eg. Protein, cholesterol, knee etc., but often there are dozens in one category. Other than that, Tracker is great.

[Polygon]

Does that really matter on a system an indexer like tracker or beagle is going to be used on? What do you do with your computer that would make you care about wasted cpu cycles? What are cpu cycles?

not to mention that both beagle and tracker dont index unless you are idle on the computer anyway.

[bruce89]

I wish I could change my vote. I keep things organised in a nice hierarchy, I don't need any memory wasters.

[spupy]

+1 locate. It doesn't index content, but it is faster then everything else, and I can grep it. :P

Though I don't really like content indexers. Don't know if people are really so messy that they need this kind of programs that much. Maybe it's just me.

[sicofante]

Tracker doesn't find things. Beagle does. Easy choice.

I know I might configure Tracker to actually work. Why would I? Beagle devs cared for me. Tracker's didn't.

I hope Ubuntu reconsiders Beagle again as default.

[samjh]

locate

[dracule]

usually if i cant find something, i dont know the name of it. so these dont help at all. If i did know the name of it, i would know what folder it would be in.

[pcybill]

+1 Google Desktop

[mrgnash]

Beagle any day of the week.

[Speed Demon]

Now, neither. I've used Google Desktop but it makes my computer go zany and processor (or somethin) clicks as it indexes yet when i disable it it doesn't. But now I have re-arranged everything to where I either know where it is or I will find it when i go throught to wipe my HDD to install a new Distro :lolflag:

[mali2297]

I don't need a search tool for my personal files. However, I sometimes use locate to search system files.

[ghindo]

I just organize my files in a logical way. Programs like Tracker and Beagle seem really unnecessary and kind of resource hogs.

[mindhaq]

I voted neither, because Tracker on Hardy doesn't find anything, and I didn't give Beagle a try yet.

I like the integration of Tracker a lot. But this doesn't help me at all if can't find anything. Looking at index statistics, it should easily find what I'm looking for.

[Zlatan]

I like deskbar applet very much and it uses Tracker:)

[roelpeeters]

+1 for find and grep. Fast, easy and finds everything I need.

[bp1509]

d

[sicofante]

find, grep, slocate, and ls is all you need.
That is all you need. Most ordinary people need a reliable engine with a simple to use graphical user interface. None of your beloved apps has that.

[ack389]

I prefer to use beagle personally.
Has anyone used the search feature in OS X. I have found it very useful for searching for things that you can vaguely remember such as a work document or visited webpage, it is usually spot on. In reality though, I don't use the search functions often enough to compensate for the wasted resources.

[pt123]

Tracker is useless, buggy as hell and the development on it is practically dead like many Gnome applications.

[Polygon]

tracker works very well for me. It seems that unless you enable the taskbar icon for it tho, it doesn't like to index anything.

and all programs are 'buggy', and what proof do you have that all development on it has halted? =)

[stimpack]

Neither, I always know where everything is.

Now when a tracker can search video files and tell me which episode something I search for happened, I think I will use it ;)

[PhoenixP3K]

I noticed the other day I had both Tracker and Beagle installed (must be from a Gusty to Hardy upgrade). I tried a search on both and Beagle provided me with much more significant search results.

I usually don't need to search for files because I'm organized, but when ever I need to find a subject from one of my classes and I don't know in which course it was talked about I find the right document in a breeze.

So Beagle got my vote... but I guess I'll have to uninstall tracker again after I upgrade to Intrepid Ibex in a few weeks.

[pietro2580]

Everyone who is saying that they are so extraordinary in organizing their files: ok, maybe I can believe you.
However, what if you want to search the content of a file? Sometime I read something in a scientific article, but afterwards I cannot remember in which article it was, than you need a decent indexer.

And tracker does not work for me, neither does goolge desktop. They both fail in searching my evolution mail box. I am now trying beagle, hopefully it works better...

[aleemsidi]

I voted Beagle.

My system is a laptop with Ubuntu Jaunty, which comes installed with Tracker and Evolution.

I wanted to index my home folder and emails.

Since Evolution has no MS-Exchange 2007 support, and since I find it quite cumbersome and buggy, I chose to uninstall Evolution, and install Thunderbird instead (with lightning extensions and davmail)

I was using Tracker until now, but found little support to index emails in Thunderbird. So I decided to try Beagle, and remove tracker completely. I installed beagle and thunderbird-beagle via apt. Google Desktop was not a good choice for me because of the web front-end, which doesn't work with my proxy settings that I have for work.

Previous unfavourable experiences with beagle made me question my decision to install it but I decided to anyway.

Note that after installation the Beagle daemon, and Search will not start until you log out and log back into gnome (an entry is put in your startup applications)

After installing beagle, I must say, that doing a simple search in the Deskbar Applet (selecting beagle-live as one of the backends) yielded many more results (from the same folders) than Tracker did. It also appeared (in my view) to take very little time to index my home folder which is 80G. It must have taken less than 5 minutes. In all honesty, I don't know if I remember how long tracker took.

And now Beagle is happily indexing all my mbox files in Thunderbird.

I can't say that tracker was not able to do this for me, since I never tried the beta program which is supposed to do index thunderbird emails. However reading on the bug-reports in the official tracker development page, there seemed to be no official support for indexing emails in thunderbird. So it did not suit my needs. I had previously tried to enable the tracker indexing option for emails in Evolution, but it never worked.

So my vote today, for what i need goes with Beagle (from someone who has tried both).

[jongkind]

Beagle is about to declare ummaintained...
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9larn/beagle_desktop_search_about_to_declare/