Do you use Beagle search?

[scorp123]

I've found nothing better than Windows and the whole MS Office suite for features, ease of use, and unquestioned compatability.

"Microsoft" and "unquestioned compatability" in the same sentence?? LOL

[Adler]

BTW, ThunderBird has some very nifty

scorp123,

A little bit off topic from my side, but I've stuck with Evolution. Can TB spell-check in multiple languages at the same time? I do that with Evolution.

Also, I never was able to add my signature .GIF to my signature line as I can do with Evolution. Or, HTML links?

Just curious.

I'm having a very busy day here, and forgot to answer the poster that mentioned that he [/i]had[i] saved all those .pst files. I've got a lot saved to CD, but never could import them into a Linux app. But, those are so old, at this point, it no longer matters. I let GMail take over some of the load. LOL!

Adler

[scorp123]

Can TB spell-check in multiple languages at the same time? I do that with Evolution.

I don't use those features. My "spell checker" are the English lessons of John Patrick O'Neill and the many many years I spent in Swiss schools ... Although not always perfect it's "good enough". But yes, Thunderbird has spell-checkers ... except I don't use them.

Also, I never was able to add my signature .GIF to my signature line as I can do with Evolution. Or, HTML links?

Back at HP I had a signature "hp -- invent" logo (a JPEG file) and I never had troubles with sending URL's. GIF is a proprietary format now, so maybe you should try a free format such as JPEG or PNG?

saved all those .pst files. I've got a lot saved to CD, but never could import them into a Linux app.

The easiest thing to do is to install Thunderbird on Windows, and then let it import the Outlook (where the *.PST files are mounted as folders) settings. From there on it's very easy to transport the Thunderbird settings to any other platform you wish -- just copy the files over into the right place (on Linux: ~/.mozilla-thunderbird ) and you're done.

[Adler]

scorp123,

Before this goes on too long both my English, and German are good. Spanish, and French are questionable.

I can convert any image that I have to any format.

I spent three years living outside of Basle.

[scorp123]

I spent three years living outside of Basle.

Nice

[dgittler]

"Microsoft" and "unquestioned compatability" in the same sentence?? LOL

Certainly. Never, not once has someone not been able to read one of my Word documents or Excel spreadsheets, nor have I had difficulty in reading something sent to me. Spreadsheets from Spain, documents in Chinese from China, everything works beautifully and MS Office handles it all.

I realize many Linux users love to scoff at Microsoft but the fact remains that their software is powerful, easy to use, and I freely chose it for that reason. Likewise I freely chose Mint to use on my laptop because it fits my needs for that computer and does what I need it to do as well as being lighter on resources.

It's a shame, and ironic, that Linux users will boast about a friendly community and proclaim that everyone should have freedom of choice in their software, but then scoff and belittle the choices of others if it's not to their preferences, especially if that choice is Microsoft. Attitudes like that can't help but leave a bitter taste in the mouths of non-Linux users that even mints have a hard time removing, once tasted.

[linuxviolin]

the fact remains that their software is powerful, easy to use

If you say or want it… but nevertheless I do not agree fully with that.

It's a shame, and ironic, that Linux users will boast about a friendly community and proclaim that everyone should have freedom of choice in their software, but then scoff and belittle the choices of others if it's not to their preferences, especially if that choice is Microsoft.

Of course everybody is free to choose what he wants, nobody says the opposite. But also everybody is free to express its opinion… even against Microsoft.
You fall here into what you denounce, in the opposite direction

[alexander]

Attitudes like that can't help but leave a bitter taste in the mouths of non-Linux users that even mints have a hard time removing, once tasted.

awful, awful pun.

[kenetics]

I realize many Linux users love to scoff at Microsoft but the fact remains that their software is powerful, easy to use, and I freely chose it for that reason.

And expensive!

I used to be the office guru on spreadsheets, some had 40 worksheets filled with formulas, tables and VBA modules. Believe me, compatability between Excel versions is not all that great. We started out with Lotus 123, and everyone groaned when we made the switch to MS Office. Now that I'm retired, it is a pleasure to use the Open Office Suite, even if it lacks some of the power of MS.

Btw, after years of losing mail by having to reinstall Windows, changing computers, and the possibility of downloading viruses, I leave all my email on the internet, both with my ISP and with free email sources (Yahoo is a good one). I don't even install email client software on my computers. I can access my mail from any computer. I can't think of any reason to download email.

[catcher]

I voted no - sorry am I off topic here?

[scorp123]

but the fact remains that their software ...

... totally sucks big-time. Don't waste your time trying to convince me of the opposite. Microsoft sucks. Their software is broken by design and a security nightmare. The company has been convicted of illegal activities. They don't stick to any standards but instead 'kidnap' existing standards and then make people believe that their crap changes are "innovations". That's their "embrace + extend + extinguish" tactics. How many noobs are out there who in all earnest believe that Microsoft "invented" TCP/IP and the Internet? Too many! Microsoft sucks big time. That's my personal and professional opinion. In the areas where I work (e.g. security-sensitive zones ...) Microsoft is flat-out banned from the network for being nothing but a waste of valuable system resources and for being the most likely entry point for any security glitch that your network will hit by. And don't get me started on that joke of firewall they ship with XP and onwards.

easy to use, and I freely chose it for that reason.

You are free to use whatever you want (and can afford) and what works best for you. I am not trying to "missionate" you into using something different.

but then scoff and belittle the choices of others if it's not to their preferences, especially if that choice is Microsoft.

I scoff at this particular sentence: << "Microsoft" and "unquestioned compatability" >> ... Especially given that it has been proven time and time again that Microsoft deliberately changes their software so that it in fact *BREAKS* compatibility. I am sorry to say but that sentence of your's is either a really really sad and bad joke or you are not nearly informed and qualified enough to make any statements about "compatibility" and Microsoft software.

As I said above: Please feel free to use what you want. But don't try to "missionate" others please, especially not with such rather questionable and factually false statements as above.

[calumc]

Unquestioned compatibility?
Has anyone seen office 2007? nothing in it is backwards compatible! and whats the only real difference between it and previous versions?: its a pretty shade of blue

[Adler]

its a pretty shade of blue

calumc,

Did they copy that shade of blue from OpenOffice?

nothing in it is backwards compatible!

I think they did the same thing with Office 98.

Game on M$, game on...

At least we can discuss real user experiences here.

[elder]

No bEagle, just Google Desktop

[contents]

There might be something of a problem with tracker in mint. I'm using mint xfce now, and whenever I reboot, tracker spends about two or three minutes indexing, which pushes the cpu speed up to 100% and makes everything extremely annoyingly slow. It should only have to do that once, as far as I know, and then do minor additions to the index after that. I wonder if mint-desktop somehow confuses tracker, and makes it think that it has to re-index everything all over again at every boot. I haven't tried it with the gnome edition, so it might also just be an issue with an xfce app. Does anyone else using tracker have this problem?

[Adler]

Hi All,

This might seem like a brutal question, but why run any of these resource intensive applications? I ran Beagle, then had to keep indexing my files.

I found it far simpler to park a few things in Cyberspace, and then just keep things organized in my /Home Folder. I have photos / screen shots that would never be indexed because I hadn't changed their names.

This is a pretty complex app, which really has never worked for me because for years now I never labellled everything to be indexed.

[contents]

The nice thing about tools like beagle and tracker is that they're able to search text within files. So that if you're looking for all of the documents, html files, etc., where a certain word or name is mentioned, beagle or tracker can find them. They can also index your email, your bookmarks, or various other things that aren't easily sorted through by file name.

The major work of indexing, where the cpu speed ramps up and everything slows down, should only happen once, as far as I understand, and that might take five or ten minutes. After that, there should just be additions or subtractions to that shouldn't seriously affect cpu speed at all.

I don't think I had any problem with beagle in regular mint, but I never actually used it. I was having a problem with tracker in xfce, where it was reindexing on every reboot, so I just uninstalled it. So while xfce uses the frontend catfish to search, it doesn't have any powerful engine that can index within files (as far as I know). There are a few other backends that work with xfce aside from beagle and tracker (listed here: http://software.twotoasts.de/?page=catfish), but I haven't tried them yet.

[scorp123]

This might seem like a brutal question, but why run any of these resource intensive applications?

Exactly. It just eats the resources away and if you keep your stuff a bit organised you won't even need those apps.

just keep things organized in my /Home Folder.

Absolutely. Keep things tidy, don't clutter your desktop with icons you won't use anyway, put text files into a folder "Textfiles", put photos into "Photos/NameOfPersonOnThePhoto" (e.g. Photos/Family/ ... /Photos/Colleagues, etc.) and so on and so on and you won't ever need Beagle ... and you can use the free computer resources for something else

[scorp123]

The nice thing about tools like beagle and tracker is that they're able to search text within files.

Standard shell tools such as 'grep' can do that since the 1970's

Code: Select all

grep "TextWeSearchFor" -r /where/we/search/for/it

And you can combine this with 'find' for more efficiency. E.g. if you know that the text passage is inside a file with the ending *.txt you can combine these two and do something like e.g.:

Code: Select all

find . -name \*.txt -exec grep -H "free soul" {} \;

Result:

Code: Select all

./Documents/Textdocuments/Spartan_Epitaph.txt:Should any free soul come across this place

... and all this is done in seconds and doesn't take up too many system resources.

So that if you're looking for all of the documents, html files, etc., where a certain word or name is mentioned, beagle or tracker can find them.

See above. It's also possible to perform such tasks easily without such resource-hungry tools.

The major work of indexing, where the cpu speed ramps up and everything slows down, should only happen once, as far as I understand, and that might take five or ten minutes.

But if you have like 100's of GB of data then this indexing business can take awful long ages. It's just too much of a hassle for me.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate efforts such as Beagle and I can see that programs such as Beagle would be a welcome addition to the desktop for many users. But given current circumstances regarding Beagle's behaviour I can't help but come to the conclusion that this excellent idea behind Beagle is apparently being badly executed ... Resource-hungry as Beagle is at the moment I guess most users are better off not using it at the moment.

[linuxviolin]

scorp, I am in agreement with all that you wrote. You are my God! [JOKE]