Search document content in Mac & Linux
If there's one feature I like most about Mac, it must be the spotlight search 'summoned' via the keyboard shortcut: command-space.
It searches not only by filenames, but also the content text; not only in text files, but also in RTF, DOC, etc. It makes folder boundaries disappear, and file names unimportant. The files indexing is automatically done in background.
In Windows, about 10 years ago, there was a Google desktop search sidebar tool, but discontinued.
In Linux, we have multiple built-in tools, eg. updatedb, then locate pattern for file names; or ascii content by grep -HERin pattern path; or by more search criteria, 'find' command
Ubuntu has its all-in-one search works somewhat similarly.
For other distro's like mxlinux, an option maybe a tool: search monkey. To install:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install searchmonkey
For usage, 3 different ways:
(A) bottom-left menu, type search. prefilled search location $HOME
(B) terminal command line:
$ searchmonkey
or
$ searchmonkey -d directory -f filename_regex -t text_regex
eg.
searchmonkey -d /path/to/directory -f txt -t howto
(C) the handy way, configure in thunar preference i.e. the explorer
file preference > customized action
select 'find files here'
origin default is catfish
replace it with
searchmonkey -d %f
then setup keyboard shortcut for this action.
Note that it's real time search, not from pre-processed database. Therefore, searching in a big folder takes long time.