Launchy : Application Launcher for Linux

Launchy is a popular application launcher , that has been available for windows for quite some time now, recently they launched the Linux version of their application . Launchy is a application launcher that allows you to launch applications , open documents , webpages even search Google or get weather information, just by typing into a centrally located textbox on the desktop. As you type text in the textbox , Launchy tries to guess what you are trying to type(name of application you are trying to start , or document's name).

Launchy trying to guess Application , you want to run.

Launchy is very similar in functionality to Open Source "Gnome DO" file manager which i had reviewed few months back(Read the article here) and Quicksilver application available for Mac OS. Launchy has an attractive user interface , which can be further customized with number of themes available online. Furthermore , compared to GNOME Do , Launchy has much smaller memory footprint.

Right Clicking anywhere in Launchy's windows gives you options to Customize launchy further(like changing default theme of launchy , or changing the file type and location where to scan) or Rescan Catalog .

Customizing Launchy

Launchy with different themes

Installing Launchy

Launchy is available as Source code or debian package . If you are using any non debian distribution like Fedora , OpenSuse etc you would need to compile the package to install Launchy. However , if you are using Ubuntu (or any other debian based distribution) you can install Launchy easily by following the below mentioned steps:

First launch Terminal windows from (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and issue the following command to download and install launchy:

wget http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/launchy/launchy_2.1.2-1_i386.deb

and

sudo dpkg -i launchy_2.1.2-1_i386.deb

If you did not encounter any error in above step , launchy should be properly installed. To start Launchy click on (Applications -> Accessories -> Launchy ).

Now, to show Launchy on desktop press (Cntrl + Space) , you should get Launchy's window in the center of the desktop.

Launchy located centrally on my Ubuntu desktop

Article Written by : Ambuj Varshney (blogambuj@gmail.com)
For Desktop on Linux Blog , http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com
(C) 2008 , Ambuj Varshney