I did some searching, and still was left wondering: What are Linux users using as their substitute for "Spotlight" in 2023/2024?
For searching quickly and thoroughly I have settled on a slightly customized "F-search", pair with a quickly accessible syntax reference / crutch, because regex hard, mane!. But even regex can't do fuzzy searching, and... it just is not 'spotlight'.

I'm considering some rust-based CLI tools, I'm just gonna say 'tree', or... idk. They are written down some where and currently are misplaced, so I'll just stop.

What's everybody else doing? Any top picks?


Oh yeah, and in case it might matter, I'm Cinnamon Mint here, but I will clone, I will fork, I will cmake, build cargo... whatever. I'll try. So don't hold back.

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there is a command locate, which can be used, and it also has an improved version plocate.
If you are working with some kind of IDE (like eclipse) it can manage your projects and files and you can easily search whatever you want inside the project.
Also we have software to manage image/music/video libraries.
Basically would be nice to know exactly what are you looking for?

Yes, what is "Spotlight" for, or more specifically what tasks are you looking to carry out?

Yo! This is crazy. It's like a combination of spotlight, obsidian, and google search... wild. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to.

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When I need a spotlight I use a 12V 1-million-candlepower handlheld style. They work well for my purposes.

Oh really??? What did you like most, and what helped you???

recoll works pretty well

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Sorry for the lag on this. Just busy, Only had 'not much' time to actually look into any of the suggestions, prior to continuing on with the conversation, better informed. So, to answer your question "exactly what are you looking for?". I'm looking for, technically not 'spotlight', although spotlight is great. Mostly back in the Macintosh days, my mac days, which ended around, 2016, I had been using something called "quicksilver". It was basically spotlight: 'ctrl + space', or, for some reason I have 'splat '.'', or ''.' + space', and then you could start typing and it would fuzzy search your entire system, and attached network, if you wanted.

It would create a list that you could cmd + tab through (our alt+tab) the results, it would rank at the top of the list recently used items, you could exclude, or blacklist files, I believe you could set cut-offs for file sizes, over and under. I remember this because it was very useful in sound engineering school to have a ~3, 4 or 5Mb cutoff otherwise you'd get flooded with these certain types of audio files... I don't think I already said this, but if so, then here it is again: It was super fast, and you could get to anything, especially recently / frequently accessed items, you could access files of any type, applications, Use you file manager (Finder). And that was pretty much it.

I'll also clarify the issues I have with current tools I've used / am using thus far: Search, inside Mint... I think it only searches applications. Very limited; FSearch, very good in many ways, but no fuzzy search, regex aint easy IMO, can't open or select multiple items from results, can't drag / drop from results.

Terminal stuff is okay, I mean I love terminals, but they do not feel elegant, the searching and moving, and previewing, to me. So yes. That's it, I just want to a key or 2 to bring up a search to be able to open files or links or apps with a little more efficiency, Thanks again.

https://github.com/topics/spotlight-alternative

Good luck