Beagle and desktop search on Ubuntu

I like Windows Desktop Search and trying to replicate the experience on Ubuntu is not easy.  I don’t do grep very well.   MetaTracker is the hacker’s choice but I just don’t think I have the time.  Beagle sounds great but it is really still in beta and that not even counting some of the darn “optional” software it needs to parse .doc, .ppt, .xls etc.

Also, Beagle is based on Mono and you are basically considered an apostate by the Free Software Church and its followers just by thinking about installing it on your GNU/Linux system, thus little documentation and support for it is available on the web.  Considering some recent Ballmer’s comments, I would worry too.