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I miss "everything search" and "listary " of Windows - they are super quick to find and launch. Time for them to index my whole harddisk is 0.2 seconds[i guess they use the NTFS journal database]. They are automatically re-index instantly if some new files are created.

I want to locate a file in Linux by just its filename NOT its content. everything does the same in windows.

In Linux i have found two options that works for me. Time for them to index my whole harddisk using:

  • 1st option: sudo updatedb (mlocate) 3 minutes to reindex the database.
  • 2nd option: everything via wine ... roughly 5 minutes [it index even ext4 ].

Now I am a desktop user so i prefer a nice gui to search them quickly.

everything search running with wine

Honourable mentions:

  1. krunner does the job.. but i hate the fact that baloo indexing takes forever. I guess it search for content inside file as well. If only it would give us to index just the filename.
  2. unity dash can find the files you touched. But it doesnot locate outside the files/folder which you have touched.

So my question . Does anybody knows how i can index quickly and search the indexed filename with a gui?

Pablo Bianchi
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nazar2sfive
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  • tracker takes forever to index my entire harddisk... everything takes at most 5 minutes to do so including my ext4 partition. everything does the same for ntfs partition in blink in windows using ntfs table. So i am sticking around with everything in linux as well.. But if i try to open fir.h file from the search result of everything ... which is associated with its wine explorer . it tries to open the same with ** wine notepad** ... how can i make the wine explorer to open my file with gedit for example. – nazar2sfive Jan 02 '16 at 07:11
  • found a solution to my problem ... thanks to https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MestreLion/wine-tools/master/wine-import-extensions .... just run the script and BOOM!!!.. YOU ARE IN BUSINESS... – nazar2sfive Jan 07 '16 at 04:56
  • now how can i contact the "to whom it may concern" to add something like ntfs table journel used by windows in linux as well...??? do i have to send email to Linus Torvalds to make the changes to use such feature ?? or request him to make ext5..?? https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/fs/ext4 – nazar2sfive Jan 07 '16 at 05:02

7 Answers7

4

My first recommendation is ANGRYsearch. Superfast, fully configurable. You can find the official website here. To install, you need some dependencies (if not there already). In a terminal type:

sudo apt install python3-pyqt5

Then, download latest release from here. Unzip in a folder, and then from a terminal inside that folder type:

chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh

A second recommentation is regexxer. This is easier to install. From a terminal, just type: sudo apt-get install regexxer. Yet, I have not used this so I cannot tell how fast it is.

  • will give it a try.. and let know.. looks promising. – nazar2sfive Jul 07 '16 at 12:10
  • i have noticed that... indexing takes 4:48 minutes, if i create a new file it can quickly recrawl in 1:00 minutes updating its previous database. There is no option where it provides to look for the changes in directory or periodic self recrawl. Recrawl must be done manually. But the best part is I can use this in any desktop environment. I donot have to choose kubuntu just for baloo desktop search. If no new better answers come my vote is for ANGRYsearch = universal fast DESKTOP search for linux. – nazar2sfive Jul 07 '16 at 13:46
  • ANGRYsearch Readme page mentions similarity to another project FSearch. @nazar2sfive It is programmed in C not python as ANGRYsearch, you may try it too as you are looking for best performance. – user.dz Jul 07 '16 at 15:55
  • You must have an enormous amount of data! Did you give regexxer a try? If better, I would consider using it too :) –  Jul 07 '16 at 15:58
  • i am checking the FSearch actually[as it was mentioned in ANGRYsearch github page].. i will go in details and post tomorrow – nazar2sfive Jul 07 '16 at 15:58
  • regexxer is no good – nazar2sfive Jul 07 '16 at 15:59
  • i am having compiling problem.. some help @Sneetsher To install Fsearch in Ubuntu 16.04... 
    sudo apt-get install autotools-dev
sudo apt-get install automake
sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev
sudo apt install intltool
    – nazar2sfive Jul 07 '16 at 16:30
  • @nazar2sfive, Could you upload full log with error message to http://paste.ubuntu.com . I've just compiled it, but with downloading any package as i have most dev lib already installed. may be you have missing dependency? – user.dz Jul 07 '16 at 16:41
  • @Sneetsher http://paste.ubuntu.com/18751770/ in aur : https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=fsearch-git – nazar2sfive Jul 08 '16 at 01:52
  • @nazar2sfive, sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev should install needed build dependencies including autotools. Just curious about @android, Which platform are you using, x86_32 android with chroot? – user.dz Jul 08 '16 at 10:40
  • @Sneetsher thankx. mine is uname -p x86_64. I am just a script kiddler and linux for me is just for fun or hobby i guess. Funny you ask i was thinking of running plasma once it supports for my samsung galaxy. – nazar2sfive Jul 09 '16 at 03:52
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    I finally got FSearch after some more googling. Seems it has better performance than ANGRYsearch but i can't tell for sure. For ease of install right now i prefer ANGRYsearch but FSearch has some potential. – nazar2sfive Jul 09 '16 at 03:54
3

I also recommend FSearch https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch

I found that it index my files faster than ANGRYsearch. However searching for files feels smooth with ANGRYsearch. Recrawling is faster with ANGRYsearch. So overall ANGRYsearch feels better.

FSearch is just in PreAlpha according to git page. So future release may improve it.

Compiling was little trouble for me. So I am posting following here for my own future reference and it might help others as well. I tried the following in Kubuntu 16.04

sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev autotools-dev automake libglib2.0-dev intltool gnome-common git
git clone https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch
cd fsearch
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install
nazar2sfive
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1

I am going for the desktop search feature of the kde plasma. I guess the following is possible ... 

balooctl config set contentIndexing no
nazar2sfive
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    indexing took around 5 minutes same as ANGRYsearch [after turning off 'contentIndexing']. I can quickly search the indexed file from krunner or application menu. It doesnot provide me option how often to recrawl. It does however recrawl in every reboot. Recrawl with baloo however takes longer around 4 minutes i guess [manually measured using iotop]. But i guess it does so only once during reboot. when new files are created it seems to automatically add it to database at instant - so no need for any "manual" recrawl like ANGRYsearch. Biggest problem - i have to choose kde. – nazar2sfive Jul 07 '16 at 13:57
1

This is the BEST,

FSearch is a promising new file search utility for the Linux desktop, inspired by the Everything Search Engine tool for Windows.

read this OMGUbuntu article about it

download a (64-bit) .deb package from here on GitHub

Install with Gdebi or 

cd Downloads                   # or wherever your downloads go 
sudo dpkg -i fsearch*.deb      # replace with exact name if needed
Zanna
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M. Amin
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0

another BEST is albert. It is best keyboard launcher out there in linux community. And it has files extension that monitors your filesystem very quick and periodically.

enter image description here

nazar2sfive
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0

I would use gnome-do myself. It occasionally froze for me the first time I would use it upon rebooting, but this can be mostly solved by changing its settings to get rid of the shadow and transparency effects. What's more you can change the appearance style (I prefer mini myself) and the colour of the widow to suit your preferences. Also it can if desired auto-start with your computer. To install type:

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

Hope it works for you!

Michael Knoll
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  • gnome-do file index has number limitation last time i checked. gnome-do, kupfer, synaptic , recoll, gnome-search-tool did not work for me. I hope albert may show some promising feature about its indexing feature in future release. – nazar2sfive Jul 09 '16 at 03:48
  • Okay, glad you found something that works for you. Have a good day. – Michael Knoll Jul 09 '16 at 04:59
-1

Why do you need Wine? Is it not what you search (on Linux system)?

  1. apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions

    man apropos

  2. locate - find files by name

    man locate
locate "fir."

  3. find - search for files in a directory hierarchy

    man find 
find / |grep "fir."

  4. grep, egrep, fgrep, rgrep - print lines matching a pattern

    grep -R "fir." /home/yourdir/*

  5. Try to look into thisLink (maybe searchmonkey??) for more options.

Community
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ViPup
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    Searchmonkey is for Windows (latests releases). No versions available for current LTS ubuntu releases. All the other options are not GUI, as the questions requires. –  Jul 07 '16 at 09:27