Federated Search in Windows 7 is nothing remotely like an Installable File System driver, which seems to be what you’re confusing it with.

Fuse and GVFS are nothing like it.

Because Linux is modular and is not bloated by features the average person will never use, I had to do some searching in the repositories to find a Linux equivalent, I did find a fuse Filesystem, also there is a GVFS plugin for it too (which means that not only can I view the results from a GUI, I can also run scripts which interact with that data (for example send an email me when I new search result is found, or pipe that the feed into an application)) , that does what the new windows 7 does.

So you see it’s been done before.

In Windows 7, these federated search locations can be searched inside the Windows shell experience. The results aren’t just links, they can be fully functional file items. If a result is an image, it will open in Photo Gallery or your default image app. You can right-click on it and select “Edit” or “Open With”, or you can click Send To -> Mail Recipient. You can drag-and-drop the file to the desktop, or view it in the preview pane.

You can even search these locations from inside any application that uses the Common File Dialog. So you can click Insert Picture from inside MS Word, click on Flickr in your navigation pane, search for a picture of Vancouver, look at the thumbnails of all the results, and then select which one(s) you want inserted into your document.

They’re also dead simple to install. It’s as easy as clicking on a single link on the web page of the service you want to add. They’re dead simple to set up, too. The web master just needs to put an OpenSearch Description File (ie. simple, open standard XML) on the server somewhere and add a link to it for users to click on.

Of course Win7 isn’t going to look as compelling if you don’t actually look at the new features before dimissing them…

I have not seen any new stuff in Windows 7;) Which is why I am sticking with Ubuntu

BTW, Linux has a tool called Deskbar, which allows you to add custom searches to your task bar (or use Firefox’s search engine to search), and also allows you to search for files, email contacts, dictionary, documents, tomboy notes, open windows and installed programs, and do calculations, post to twitter. All in the same applet.