I've been running Linux for a few months now and am starting to have time to actaully get work done again (Since I don't have to run windows update, ad aware, etc all the time anymore). I'm trying to actaully organize my home folder and am looking for suggestions. I have thousands of documents, some dating back to the late 80's/early 90's. I have things i have written, ebooks from the cd that came with other books and docs that I have saved and downloaded from the internet, etc. I've created different folders, for example Microsoft, Cisco, Sun, Checkpoint, Electronics, Mechanical, etc. Under each I have created more folders, for example under microsoft there are folders for each os, and folders for each certification exam, etc. Since there are docs that overlap into different catagories of folders I have created I have started creating symlinks in all the folders to the one doc but I want more. I have such a huge mass of information that its starting to take forever for me to find and keep organized. Are there any search engine type of systems I can run on my system (like google for exmaple) to index everything into a searcable type of system. I basically want to find how to do one search for everything, right now I have a combination of documents in folders then a small knowledged base in a kde app called knowit as some more stuff scattered through out e-mail. I would like some sort of system to allow me to search and find what I'm looking for.

I've heard that there are some version of google actually for use on a LAN. D'nt know if that is for web pages or files as well.
Normally there are a cronjob (scheduled task) running on linux that run updatedb which searches through all files on the drive and makes a search index, only file names though.
You search this index with the locate command.

No more slow file name searches like in windows
Now you find file names within 5 seconds.
(I have never figured out what that indexing service do in windows but slow the machine down with another process to run.)

I don't know of any more in depth indexing commands. There are for sure lots of them, so I will keep my eye on this thread for answers

By the way found this project a while ago
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/features.html

I remember disabling that windows/office indexing service many times
I have a bunch of info that was in my Outlook notes and catagorized but thoe exported to simple text files. I suppose i could create folders for them but thought it would be nice if there was some way to have keywords and such associated with docs. I could start out with selectinag all docs in a folder and making a keyword related to that folder then as I find ones that related to something else could add another keyword but that stilltakes a lot of work on my part. I've seen the google applicance (I think they make you buy their little 1U box so as to not release their software which it probably well wanted by many of their competitors)