Wheezy, GNOME 3.4, search for files from GNOME-shell w/ indexing
 

Hi!

I just switched back to Debian for the first time in years after Ubuntu 12.10 was too much for my laptop, and occasionally broke.

I just installed Wheezy on my Thinkpad T61 and there's one feature I miss: file search.

I'm used to hitting Super (the Windows key) and being able to just search for files, however GNOME 3.4 doesn't seem to have this functionality built in. Are there any (preferably indexing, although I have an SSD so non-indexing would work) file search tools available for GNOME shell or that integrate into the shell somehow?

Failing that, does anyone have a good guide to using locate or similar command-line tools? (It's been a few years...)

Thanks!
Rob

P.S. I suspect there is GNOME extension lurking somewhere that might do this, however I would prefer a built-in Debian package if at all possible; one fewer thing to remember to update/details to keep track of.

My favorite is to just use find from the command line; the man page for find is reasonably detailed, and gives a range of examples. However, the search is not indexed, so it can be slow if you are looking through a large hierarchy, and is not suited to content searches.

The standard Gnome browser Nautilus does have a search (menu go->search-for-files), but it is rudimentary, and again, if you are looking after an indexed solution, does not meet your requirements.

There are quite a few indexing search packages in the Debian collection. Some are oriented more towards metadata, others towards content searching. Probably the first of these is what you are looking for.

• meta tracker (has Gnome integration)
• xapian (highly scalable content search backend, some tools)
• namazu (content searching)
• strigi (cross platform)
• doodle (metadata searching)
• swish++ (CGI based)
• pinot (front end for xapian)
• recoll (front end for xapian)
• mlocate (indexed implementation of locate)
• catfish (front end for other packages, possibly orphaned)

Wow!

Thank you for such an extensive list! This is exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you! :)