desktop search in GNOME
I've been using GNOME for a long time and am used to it, but the desktop search functionality is pretty limited. In my current installation it doesn't seem like tracker is integrated into the "windows" key search -- but from what I read it's supposed to be. I'm about to get a new computer and am planning to do an incremental migration where I try to fix some of hte problems in my current setup. I wondered -- does anyone have tips for getting search set up in an effective way? Thanks so much as usual, Matt
Hi Matt -
I've been using GNOME for a long time and am used to it, but the desktop search functionality is pretty limited. In my current installation it doesn't seem like tracker is integrated into the "windows" key search -- but from what I read it's supposed to be.
I'm in the same boat with Ubuntu. Tracker - or an equivalent - *used* to be set up. I'd say about 2-3 years ago, desktop search on my machine was comparable to Windows or Mac OS Spotlight: hit the hotkey, start typing, and files containing your search term would appear. Now, at best I get files with the search term *in the filename only*. This is NBG. I have lots of files, and I'm a fairly messy person. A big heap of files with searchable contents *should* be indexed, and not by me. cheers, Stewart
Yeah,. It's lamentable. I can't even find decent documentation for how to set it up oneself. I don't understand why that would have disappeared too. On Oct 21, 2016 8:42 PM, "Stewart C. Russell via talk" <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
Hi Matt -
I've been using GNOME for a long time and am used to it, but the desktop search functionality is pretty limited. In my current installation it doesn't seem like tracker is integrated into the "windows" key search -- but from what I read it's supposed to be.
I'm in the same boat with Ubuntu. Tracker - or an equivalent - *used* to be set up. I'd say about 2-3 years ago, desktop search on my machine was comparable to Windows or Mac OS Spotlight: hit the hotkey, start typing, and files containing your search term would appear. Now, at best I get files with the search term *in the filename only*.
This is NBG. I have lots of files, and I'm a fairly messy person. A big heap of files with searchable contents *should* be indexed, and not by me.
cheers, Stewart --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
See if you can find a config that controls it: it may have been defaulted to off, as it can be an expensive operation for someone who never uses it. Setting the default to off is exactly what a UX designer might do. --dave On 22/10/16 08:59 AM, Matt Price via talk wrote:
Yeah,. It's lamentable. I can't even find decent documentation for how to set it up oneself. I don't understand why that would have disappeared too.
On Oct 21, 2016 8:42 PM, "Stewart C. Russell via talk" <talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@gtalug.org>> wrote:
Hi Matt -
> I've been using GNOME for a long time and am used to it, but the desktop > search functionality is pretty limited. In my current installation it > doesn't seem like tracker is integrated into the "windows" key search -- > but from what I read it's supposed to be.
I'm in the same boat with Ubuntu. Tracker - or an equivalent - *used* to be set up. I'd say about 2-3 years ago, desktop search on my machine was comparable to Windows or Mac OS Spotlight: hit the hotkey, start typing, and files containing your search term would appear. Now, at best I get files with the search term *in the filename only*.
This is NBG. I have lots of files, and I'm a fairly messy person. A big heap of files with searchable contents *should* be indexed, and not by me.
cheers, Stewart --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org <mailto:talk@gtalug.org> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk <https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk>
--- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
-- David Collier-Brown, | Always do right. This will gratify System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest davecb@spamcop.net | -- Mark Twain
On 2016-10-22 10:58 AM, David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
Setting the default to off is exactly what a UX designer might do.
Given that Linux is a developer/sysadmin do-ocracy*, I'd be surprised if there are any UX folks involved. Filesystem indexing chews disk space and CPU, so I can easily some maintainer going eek and turning everything useful off. User-focused commercial OSes enable desktop search by default, so I guess this just isn't the year of Linux On The Desktop yet … (a tired joke since at least 2001). Jef Raskin produced systems in the 1980s (SwyftWare, 1983; Canon CAT, 1987) with "Leap Keys" to do the equivalent of desktop search. So this is hardly a cutting-edge need. My last experience with installing search daemons on Ubuntu was not good. One would silently fail if it found UTF-8 text. Another was clearly maintained by someone with either a much smaller or much faster system than me, as it ran cron jobs at very high priority that never finished before the next update was triggered. Basically meant my machine ran like molasses after an hour and needed the indexer processes killed. cheers, Stewart *: case in point - “Debian New Maintainers' Guide” <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/> is all about being a good Debian citizen and developer, and nothing to do with user experience.
A quick partial answer -- I found this tracker search provider extension for gnome-shell: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/783/tracker-search-provider/ It doesn't work with GNOME 3.22 out of the box, but downloading the source code and changing the shell-version in metadata.json and copying the files to .local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/tracker-search-provider@sinnix.de as suggested in the README seems to work. it's not bad. I'm looking forward to integrating this into emacs now... Would love to hear success stories with recoll, or comparisons of tracker & recoll if people have them. On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 11:38 AM, Stewart C. Russell via talk < talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2016-10-22 10:58 AM, David Collier-Brown via talk wrote:
Setting the default to off is exactly what a UX designer might do.
Given that Linux is a developer/sysadmin do-ocracy*, I'd be surprised if there are any UX folks involved. Filesystem indexing chews disk space and CPU, so I can easily some maintainer going eek and turning everything useful off.
User-focused commercial OSes enable desktop search by default, so I guess this just isn't the year of Linux On The Desktop yet … (a tired joke since at least 2001). Jef Raskin produced systems in the 1980s (SwyftWare, 1983; Canon CAT, 1987) with "Leap Keys" to do the equivalent of desktop search. So this is hardly a cutting-edge need.
My last experience with installing search daemons on Ubuntu was not good. One would silently fail if it found UTF-8 text. Another was clearly maintained by someone with either a much smaller or much faster system than me, as it ran cron jobs at very high priority that never finished before the next update was triggered. Basically meant my machine ran like molasses after an hour and needed the indexer processes killed.
cheers, Stewart
*: case in point - “Debian New Maintainers' Guide” <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/> is all about being a good Debian citizen and developer, and nothing to do with user experience. --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
participants (3)
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David Collier-Brown -
Matt Price -
Stewart C. Russell