Easily Install Google Desktop & Picasa For Ubuntu

I absolutely love Google, I am a die hard google fan and use google as my homepage, if I dont know google always is my guide and google simplifies my quest to finding information I need online. For a while now google has come to the desktop, first to windows, and not too long ago it came to Linux. I was a fan of beagle but now I prefer google desktop, I press ctrl 2 times and search my desktop or the web without having to click a thing. Here is the quick & easy howto right from the google desktop for linux page and after that I will give you a quicker terminal installation method that saves you the navigation with your mouse.

I also love picasa, I save all my picture albums, desktop screenshots, wallpapers and more on picasaweb. Once you complete the repository instructions below, just apt-get install picasa or search synaptic or another package manager you Use.

GUI Configuration on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty)

This page will guide you through setting up an Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) system to use the Google Linux software repository. For general information, please see the Google's Linux Software Repositories page.

Key Installation and Usage

Download the key from the Google Linux Package Signing Key page.

Choose the "Software Sources" application from the "System/Administation" menu.

Click the "Import Key File..." button and select the "linux_signing_key.pub" file you downloaded previously, then click "OK".

You should now see the "Google, Inc. Linux Package Signing Key" in the list.

Package Manager Configuration

In the "Software Sources" application, click the "Third-Party Software" tab, then click the "Add..." button.

Enter "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free" for the "APT line:", then click "Add Source".

You should now see the new repository in the list. Click "Close" to finish adding the repository.

After adding the repository, you will be warned that your software information is out-of-date. Click "Reload" to finish configuring your system to use the new repository.

Alternate Command Line Configuration

Run these commands as root:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add -
apt-get update  

Recent versions of apt-get will automatically attempt to verify packages on download. If an appropriate key is not found or if the package is corrupted, you will get a message like the following:

WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
packagename  

Add the following rule to /etc/apt/sources.list

nano /etc/apt/sources.list
# Google software repository
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free  

then use apt to update then install

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install google-desktop-linux

Once everything has downloaded and installed, press alt-ctrl backspace to restart gdm and log back in and then click on enable advanced features.

press ctrl twice to popup a search window

You can also right click the google desktop icon on the gnome task panel for preferences on indexing