On windows there are several 3rd party search programs such as Everything.exe, Agent ransack, Locate32 etc.
Install them and they just work very well and very easily.

"Locate and Agent" perform a live search, whereas "Everything" indexes all of the drives quickly and once complete, presents results instantly. It's database is also tiny, despite it's speed and completeness of indexing.

Now onto Linux, where I have failed to find a search utility with anything remotely like the ease of use, small footprint and instant results of the windows versions.
Is it impossible for such a small, simple and thorough program to exist on Linux for some reason, as I have been unable to find anything comparable.

Tried tracker, recoll, catfish, strigi etc and there always seem to be something that prevents it from working "out of the box", or it's indexing is painfully slow, or it's database is just massive.

I know searches can be run from the terminal, but when I am trying to get others to convert to Linux, the lack of a user friendly search (and troublesome printer drivers) makes it more difficult to persuade them.

Thanks in advance.

There is locate run locate -u as root and you get a database of your filesystem quick and simple and there is find with a whole lot of options try info find or man find. succes.
They are command line programs offcourse ;-). And I'm sure someone will have written a gui for those programs.

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Why would you want to convert others to Linux if they want to stay in their narrow world what is the urge to save them.

kwickfind, krusader

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For database-based searches "locate" works great. For on-the-fly searches "find" reigns supreme. Yes both of these are command line utilities, but honestly, trying to convert somebody to Linux while shielding the command line from them is just setting them up for failure.

The key is not to hide the command line from them, it's to change their perception of the command line from "scary" to "useful". The DOS-based command line in Windows is nasty, and that's what Windows people are used to (assuming they've even seen it at all). Almost everybody dreads the Windows CMD, even me, a person who spends 90% of their "Linux time" logged into GUI-less systems. I love the command line, yet a chill goes down my spine every time I have to use the Windows one.

That fear of the command line is what has to change if you want to convert somebody from Windows to Linux, not exposure to the command line itself. If you can just get across the notion that, in the command line, all you have to do is type what you want to do, rather than hunting through endless menus and folders and subfolders and submenus, it should be pretty easy to convince them to try it out.

I mean hell, just earlier today I was on an XP machine and wanted to open GIMP. I double clicked on the .jpg file, nope. I right clicked on the .jpg file, GIMP wasn't listed under "Open Using" or whatever it's called. I went to the Start Menu > Programs...spent 5 minutes searching for it, nope, no GIMP. I finally had to open Explorer and navigate to C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\bin\ and find the executable to launch it. Had this been a Linux machine, I could have just opened a terminal and typed "gimp" and saved myself 5+ minutes of pointless GUI searching.

Just my opinion...

"Whereis" is my favorite to find executable files.

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Thanks for the replies and the helpful suggestions.
There is frequently a large disconnect when Windows users try and move to Linux, especially when they are elderly or not particularly computer literate, though neither should be a reason to prevent them from giving Linux a go.
I'm trying to demonstrate how great Linux is and would be a better choice for them to use than Windows, but trying to get them to use the terminal to carry out a simple function would be an absolute dead stop, as it has been for me on a few occasions.
I plan on installing Linux as a dual boot on my fathers PC, so I'm trying to identify and remove all potential stumbling blocks before I let him loose on the system.
Thanks again and I now have a few options to go away and play with.

Actually, Konqueror, Dolphin, and Nautilus all have a nice built-in "find file" function. In Konqueror and Dolphin, it's under "Tools" on the menu. In Nautilus, it's under "Go" (at least for the versions I'm running on Debian Squeeze).

In all of them, you can specify what directory to search, use wildcards, etc.

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