Locate any file on your Linux computer in less than a second.

Often trying to find a particular file on your computer can be very time consuming. You have gigabytes of space and, especially if you are not familiar with the Linux file system, you have no idea where to start. Fortunately Linux has a very simple solution for that.

This is not a new program and in fact has been around since the day's when Unix was king. It is called "locate" and it works by compiling a database of every file on your system. Then when you need to find a particular file, even if you don't know the full name of it, you simply need to type in a terminal "locate some_file_name". Before you can blink locate will find that files location and display them on the screen for you. Even if you don't know the full name of the file an asterisk will help you there with a simple "locate *part_of_a_name*" and a list will again be presented for you to choose from.

Did I mention it works from a database? Yes I did didn't I? This database is generally automatically updated every night if your distribution is correctly configured but you can update it manually with the command "updatedb" as root or with root privileges.

That's all there is to it. Instead of having your hard disk grind through the whole file system to find the file you now know how to easily "locate" it. For more information type in a terminal "man locate".