[Software] Speed of the Search function

[JoshiFresa]

Hi, my system is Kubuntu 26.04 although I don't think the version is so important in this case. I was interested in how faster the Search engine in Kubuntu would be after my experience with Windows. In my case it's clearly faster than the Windows Search for sure but there's a detail: while using Windows I installed an app called "Everything" and this app makes search truly lightspeed. It's truly amazing. So of course I was hoping to find something similar with Linux Search, as a spoiled Everything user for many years, and I even activated the "Service" of Kubuntu's Search hoping to make it faster but I wouldn't say it made any substantial change. So my question is double-fold:

Is there a way to either make the general Search faster, or some Linux inborn app that can match the amazing speed of "Everything"? Or to resign finding anything similar? Not to compare Windows and Linux in the least, but I mean the independent app "Everything" gives absolutely INSTANT results out of huge datasets, even disks of 4 Tb immediately, just insane! But I checked it does not seem to be available on Kubuntu's Discover, in a decent form to be installed. Thanks in advance for you contribution.

[die.boer]

closest you'll get is probably Fsearch
https://www.xda-developers.com/fsear...x-its-amazing/
https://itsfoss.com/fsearch/
http://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch/

[JoshiFresa]

closest you'll get is probably Fsearch
https://www.xda-developers.com/fsear...x-its-amazing/
https://itsfoss.com/fsearch/
http://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch/

You use it yourself? (Fsearch) In reviews it's reported that there's no access to external drives and in my case it's exactly what I would need. That would be a strange miss for such an otherwise great app. similar to Everything.

[Elliot Alderson]

Fsearch does in fact index external USB drives - you just have to set them as part of the indexing mechanism. It's (very slowly) building an index on an external SSD as I write, and I have 5 other external drives which also automatically index when I plug them in - because I included them in Settings/Preference/Database.
Compared to Search Everything on Windows, it is slow only because it has to build its index each time, and that can be *very* slow, but once built it's as fast as Everything. I read that Everything works so blisteringly fast because it uses NTFS meta functionality, and that obviously doen't apply with Linux.
Edit: In fact I may even be wrong about needing to add them to Settings - I've just noticed that the SSD I plugged in isn't in the Database list, and it still indexed and searched absolutely fine.