Google Desktop Gadgets For Linux

Google has rolled out a version of Desktop Gadgets for Linux. Linux fans will be happy to note that the release is open source, though for the time being you’ll have to compile it yourself. The code isn’t a 1.0 release yet, so there may be some issues, but judging by the post on the […]

GgadgetsGoogle has rolled out a version of Desktop Gadgets for Linux. Linux fans will be happy to note that the release is open source, though for the time being you'll have to compile it yourself.

The code isn't a 1.0 release yet, so there may be some issues, but judging by the post on the Google Open Source Blog, at least with Desktop Gadgets, the company is well aware of what typical Linux users want:

For Gadgets for Linux, we don't just want to simply release the final offering, but we also want to give everyone a chance to tinker with the code powering the gadgets. For this project, fostering a transparent and lively developer community is just as important as serving our users.

There are versions of Desktop Gadgets for Linux that use GTK libraries as well as QT libraries which means you can get native libs in both GNOME and KDE.

It'll be interesting to see how the Google Gadget's effort fares next to projects like KDE's Plasma widgets, which are significant part of the buzz around KDE 4.x.

Of course fans of Google's widgets could already run them using the Screenlets engine, which added Google Gadget support some time ago. But now that the Google-backed release is available things should get a little more stable and polished.

Interested users can grab the release from its Google code page.

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