slocate in the default desktop install

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 02:27:19PM +0000, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 02:06:55PM +0000, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> > Tracker only indexes the home directory of the user who does the search,
> > slocate indexes the entire disk that everybody can read.
> 
> slocate, AIUI, indexes the entire disk (including things that not everybody
> can read) and selectively filters the index appropriately.
> 
> But at any rate, I don't think the distinction between the home directory
> and the whole filesystem matters very much to a typical modern desktop user.
> Even if they did find /usr/bin/dbus-binding-tool when searching for the bus
> schedule they saved, it wouldn't be useful to them.

It's very useful to somebody with some intermediate level of knowledge
trying to track down a local bug they don't quite understand, though. I
don't think we need to divide the universe into "typical modern desktop
users" and "old-school Unix people".

> I like the suggestion of switching to a locate implementation that is less
> intrusive, but it doesn't seem feasible for 8.04, and I wondered if we might
> be able to do something in the short term to improve this.

Really? mlocate is a drop-in replacement for slocate, and I've been
using it since mid-December with no problems.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]