My quest to find the fastest search app for Linux

Question

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.

• 1st option : use the same everything via wine. Searching file is instant. Problem then arise with mime settings which can be fixed via https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MestreLion/wine-tools/master/wine-import-extensions
• 2nd option: catfish uses the power of locate. It does job but displaying file takes around 2 seconds even though all files have been indexed by updatedb.

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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

balooctl config set contentIndexing no

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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!

Answer 7

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.