How can I Find Files On Ubuntu?

Question

How can I find a specific file on an Ubuntu machine?

There's the find command but is there a graphical UI to find a file?

Answer 1

I know you asked for a GUI, but there is also other fast CLI ways, like:

• updatedb
• locate

The first command create a index, the second use the index to search. (maybe there is some GUI frontend to locate)

Answer 2

Use Places | Computer (or Places | Home or any other location) and then use the 'search' button (its a looking-glass icon)

You'll soon go back to the command-line though ;)

Answer 3

There are a few index based applications like beagle and tracker that offer GUI front-end. If you use gnome-do there is also a plugin there to use tracker as a backend. I am not sure about beagle, though.

Answer 4

Terminal (no gui)

You have two options:

find

The find tool can be used as following:

find -type f -name "data.txt" # search file that are named "data.txt"
find -type f -name "*.txt" # search file that end with ".txt" string
find -type d -name "*conf" # search file folder end with "conf" string
find -type f -name "*conf*" # search file that contains conf in their name

locate

The locate tool work slightly different. In first instance you have to initialize a new DB that contains all the entry for your filesystem with the command updatedb. After some minutes that the index is generated, you can query the db using locate file_name

Main differences:

1. find does not need to index your file
2. locate need to create an index of the filesystem

GUI

• Catfish
• gnome-search-tool (deprecated?)
• With Nautilus you can search by start typing the filename in the directory