Almost three years after Google Desktop’s launch in 2004 for the Windows operating system, Google has finally released a Linux version of the search application. Google Desktop enables Linux users to search for text inside OpenOffice documents, PDF and PostScript files, text and HTML, man pages, music, video and image files, web history and emails from Gmail and Thunderbird.

The first version supports many popular versions of Linux. It comes in the form of both RPM and a DEB distribution packages. The RPM can be installed on Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, and Mandriva distributions. The DEB will install on Debian and Ubuntu systems. The program works with both KDE and GNOME. At this time, it only supports PCs with 32-bit x86 compatible processors.
At this point, Google Desktop for Linux offers almost identical features to the Windows version, however, it lacks the Sidebar and Gadget features. Google Desktop for Linux joins other Google’s products that support the open source OS such as Picasa, Google Earth and the Firefox toolbar.