What is Catfish?

Catfish is Graphical User Interface for many different search tools such as find and locate. Catfish provides the user with a very easy to use interface for using many search tools that might be tough to use from the command line.

Installation

Catfish is in the Ubuntu repositories to install its just search for it in Add/Remove Software or install it from the command line with the command:

sudo apt-get install catfish

You can then run Catfish from the menu under accessories, or you can run the command:

catfish

Usage

The Interface has two parts. The left pane shows all of your searching options, most notably at the bottom is a drop-box that you can use to decide what search tool you would like to use. The different search tools have different strengths and weaknesses. One of the main features of find is the use of wildcards (wildcards are the * symbol and are used to represent any character 0 or more times) to search for files, but if you try to use wildcards with the beagle search tool, it won't work. Generally find is good to use, but if you aren't getting good results with find, feel free to experiment with the other search tools.

Once you have selected your search tool, you have to search for something. Enter text to search for in the box and then wait a few seconds for your results to show up. To view the files in your file manager just right click on the items and select open.