Talk:Desktop search

Merge with List of internet search engines section
The section Desktop search engines in List of internet search engines has nothing to do with the Internet or the WWW. User:newmanbe 02:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Desktop and Internet indexing may seem alike, but the considerations, purposes an required methodologies are very different.

Do programs like ava find and locate classafy as desktop search engines they only index filenames not file content?Zeal86 14:52, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

The article List of internet search engines is now a redirect to List of search engines. Desktop search engines now fall within the scope of this list. I am moving the list out of this page and to the list of search engines as a new category there. I will provide a link from here to that list. This will reduce the spam on this page. If you disagree with the change, please let me know why and feel free to revert it back. Josh Froelich 21:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The list is too long
I think it should either be separated into different lists grouping the programs by platform (i.e, Wind32, Unix-like, MacOS, etc) or removing the least popular ones. As it is right now seems rather messy. --Pfc432 19:50, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

History of search indexing in personal computers
A subdiscussion in Slashot debates on the history search indexing in PC's and PC operating systems, whether it happened first in Microsoft Office or in MacOS or in Windows 2000/XP or instead with Copernic Desktop Search. We should have something like this in here, too, to clarify the history of desktop search for the wider world. -Mardus 06:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Missing product entry; Thoughts on whether this article belongs in Web Search area.
I'm surprised by omission of Yahoo's Desktop Search product, although I haven't tried it for a long time.

Also I believe that Desktop Search inevitably will merge with some kind of Web Search congregation, rather than single provider's offering. Though Google & MS seem will try mightily to make it their way. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wargas (talk • contribs) 10:39, 6 January 2007 (UTC).

concern about terms and concepts in this article
This page uses words like 'emerging', 'data mining', 'firehose of data', and several marketing-oriented or weasel words. This is in need of a serious rewrite to be fit in any encyclopaedia. The commercial external links are highlighting specific products and are not truly neutral and are not good references. Josh Froelich 21:59, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

About the Comparisons section in the external links
Several of these comparisons are business oriented and highlight one or two commercial products as better than others. This appears to conflict with the nature of WikiPedia in that this is not a neutral point of view, nor is it the slightest bit academic or educational. If I knew any better about WP policies on external links I would also state these these links violate the external link policy (that is just an inference). I would really like to remove these links, but I mentioned it here before doing so. Josh Froelich 00:28, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I second removal of the links (or at least a cleaning). My main reason is that most of those links are severely outdated. I do think a grid of some of the *objective* comparable aspects (such as search vendor, price, platform, search type and speed) would be useful. FashionNugget 03:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

References and ideas for improvement
Working on the history and technical definitions and features of desktop searching.Josh Froelich 00:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC). Looking for neutral comparisons but I am not even sure that comparisons should be here at all due to neutrality issues, brevity, and WikiPedia policy.


 * [Untitled http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=9608]
 * Search Engines Tackle the Desktop
 * Review of desktop search engine reviews
 * PC Pro Product Reviews - Desktop search isn't a new invention (and anyone who remembers Lotus Magellan for DOS knows that the concept predates even Windows), but it is a necessary one, with ever larger hard disks costing ever less and being filled to capacity ever more quickly courtesy of cheap broadband connectivity. One thing's for sure: Windows Search isn't up to the job, so what is? It's all too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that because Google rules over the web search domain it must be the best choice on the Desktop. Or, you assume that all Desktop search clients are free and do much the same thing in much the same way, so you download and play with them all instead of mastering one.
 * 

There is indeed a need to include the historical side of this from an encyclopedic perspective. A major problem is new entrants to the market like Google, because of their visibility have caused many younger journalists and bloggers to distort history. Terminology has also changed over the years - for example PC Magazine (UK Edition) July 1992 carries an article "Text Retrieval Software" - which is a review of what would now be called Desktop Search software. It included Isys (now called Isys Desktop), and ZyIndex ( by ZyLab) - these two firms alongside dtSearch (originally called DT Software) were three pioneers that are still in business on the IBM PC platform of tools that performed indexed content searching of documents. Other tools in the article like Idealist, AskSam and Folio views would more properly have been classed as full text databases since they were not aimed at searching for content in multiple file types. There is a need to include a link in Wikipedia for 'Text Retrieval' to the 'Search' articles Ray3055 (talk) 11:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Definition of desktop search vs search tools
"Desktop search is the name for the field of search tools which search the contents of a user's own computer files, rather than searching the Internet."

This definition applies to classical tools like Grep, but the reference to the Internet could imply that actually the article is about websearch-derived software (like Google desktop search) or tools using methods similar to those used in websearch, like a document index ("Desktop search engines build and maintain an index database"), or perhaps "intelligent" software (i.e. which not only searches e-mail files but is also able to recognize diffrent types of data like From and To fields). Also the article implies that Windows search companions are not desktop search tools, while they are research tools used on desktop computers. Apokrif 16:04, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

citation for browser wars
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/37329.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.228.106.135 (talk) 14:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Spotlight Grouping.png
The image Image:Spotlight Grouping.png is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check


 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
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This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --06:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The article does not educate the reader and needs to be rewritten
It appears that "Desktop Search" isn't quite the hot topic that it used to be because "The Cloud" is superseding the desktop, so the article has been neglected. As an IT pro and a Wikipedia lover, this makes me sad.

This article is a mess. There are fake references, biased commentary (mostly irrelevant) and what appear to be blatant insertions by vendors, such as this entire sentence in parentheses:

(One exception would be tools which only search filenames — not the files' contents — e.g. Search Everything does this for NTFS volumes only, enabling it to build its index from scratch in just a few seconds.)

I'm prepared to make some BOLD changes here: discuss some of the actual technologies involved in file search, remove a lot of bias, and link back to other, more relevant articles.

--MajorFreakinEnglish (talk) 05:10, 2 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I can't wait until the "virtualization" and "cloud" ideas, are over, the smart people editing the wikipedia, especial those responsible for THIS very article, come back and finish their work in it. User:ScotXW t@lk 10:21, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree. Phrases like "For Linux, we will primarily cover the Ubuntu distribution as it was and currently is still the most popular version of Linux." do not belong in WP. Also, the decision to focus on a single distribution by a single author is not acceptable and not consistent w/ WP authoring guidelines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.1.89 (talk) 17:31, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Where is locate?
Some users (e.g. me) have given up on Windows search (one of the many reasons to look to alternative OSs), even w/ Win10. Cygwin provides locate, an ubiquitous Linux command-line tool which indexes files very efficiently. It deserves mention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.1.89 (talk) 17:31, 15 May 2016‎ (UTC)

"For Linux, we will primarily cover the Ubuntu distribution" NOT
The statement "For Linux, we will primarily cover the Ubuntu distribution as it was and currently is still the most popular version of Linux." The author should be honest and replace it with: "For Linux, I only know Ubuntu, so that is all I can do. Since it is what my friends use it must be popular.  I don't care about/know what is meant by being encyclopedic."

Today's list (distrowatch.com) shows Mint (Ubuntu roots, but less and less stock Ubuntu) @ #1, Debian at #2, Ubuntu @#3, openSUSE at #4, Manjaro @ #5, Fedora @ #6, then Zorin, elementary, CentOS and Arch. This ain't Microsoft here, you don't get to cram your distro down claiming it is more important than others so nobody can use Fedora, SuSE or Arch in your version. This doesn't work w/ the Wikpedia guidelines, and doesn't jive well w/ the overall spirit of cooperation in the open source community. Some of use have more than one distribution in our households (as much as I try to weed that Ubuntu stuff out, it keeps showing up on Raspberry Pi projects). — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrKC MD (talk • contribs) 07:55, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

this article and the Wikipedia in general
This article, its very title and the content are not too technical but rather "to marketing". There is software, that does search and index your files, probably implemented as a daemon (software). Then there could be some graphical front-end for it to configure it. And then other software, such as your file browser, could be intertwined with the "file indexing and file search framework". But instead of naming this pieces of software and explaining what they do, we could rather create yet another brain-damage article and title it "desktop search". As explanation, we could say, that it works rather differently then the "internet search". I quote: "Desktop search tools search within a user's own computer files as opposed to searching the Internet." Wow. Does it got electrolytes? User:ScotXW t@lk 10:18, 11 January 2016 (UTC)