Hi Matt -
I've been using GNOME for a long time and am used to it, but the desktop search functionality is pretty limited. In my current installation it doesn't seem like tracker is integrated into the "windows" key search -- but from what I read it's supposed to be.
I'm in the same boat with Ubuntu. Tracker - or an equivalent - *used* to be set up. I'd say about 2-3 years ago, desktop search on my machine was comparable to Windows or Mac OS Spotlight: hit the hotkey, start typing, and files containing your search term would appear. Now, at best I get files with the search term *in the filename only*. This is NBG. I have lots of files, and I'm a fairly messy person. A big heap of files with searchable contents *should* be indexed, and not by me. cheers, Stewart