How to find files in Ubuntu?

[TheFu]

No, how do I install that "terminal"?

This is long, since installing a terminal will likely not be all that helpful to someone who doesn't know what a terminal program is and how to use it at a beginner lever.

'terminal' is a type of program, not a specific program. There must be 50 different 'terminal' programs and at least 1 is already installed on your system, usually based on the DE. Often, in the Administration or System menu, there will be something with "term" or "terminal" in the name. Because the menu name and the program name seldom match in Ubuntu, it is hard to guess what your system calls it. Gnome Terminal, LXTerm, Mate-Terminal, xterm, uxterm, and many, many, others. Non-Linux computers might use something like PuTTY. While PuTTY is available on Linux, almost nobody uses it there, since every other terminal program is more standard and has great features already.

A terminal is a text command window with great power. Sorta like the old MS-Dos command prompt, but much, much, more flexible. MS-Windows added at tool they call "PowerShell" in their attempt to provide a Unix terminal-like interface.

In Unix-like OSes, a terminal window usually provides the interface to your shell. On Ubuntu Desktop variants, the default shell program is bash, but there are 20 others and you can change the shell for your userid, if you like. On an Ubuntu Server, which doesn't have any GUI, the shell is all we get after login. No GUI. Just a blank screen with something like this:

thefu@deneb:~$

That is a shell command prompt. It awaits a command, which there are many thousands of possible commands, each command has 1-50 options. So, 'find' is a command.

Underneath the GUI you are used to seeing/using, the shell is the main tool on your system. Entire books have been written about using shells and getting the most from your shell of choice. sh, ksh, bash, zsh, fish, csh, tcsh, https://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-...ect_01_01.html has more, if you care. A more friendly way to learn about the shell and how to use it is in this no-hassle, free, PDF book, https://www.linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php I've used that book in my Beginning Linux classes at the local University. A dead tree version can be bought in almost any book store, or the free PDF is fine too.

[firesdhgsht]

Thank you for all the suggestions but I need to get work done, I cannot read 20 pages beginner guide just to find some files. I just want a simple input field where I can put in *.* and restrict the result by date. Simple, you know, like usable for the average human, simple like in Windows 3.1. I am definitely not using that terminal like I want to code BASIC on a C64

[firesdhgsht]

Oh here is my system: Intel multicore, 32 GB RAM, Kubuntu 24.04, Plasma 5.27.11, Kernel 6.8.0-39

[firesdhgsht]

Thank you for the "dead tree version" help But really, I just want to compile a list of files across multiple folders that I have worked on in the past 6 months. I am a user. I open the machine get things done and close the thing. I thought someone here might have the same approach and figured out how to use Linux like a normal computer

[oldfred]

I just do not find it difficult to open terminal and copy paste a command into terminal.
I often have to edit line but save those I use into a file.

find /home/$USER -name "*.txt"  -newermt "2024-01-01" -exec ls -ils {} \;

You can then easily edit date or file name to include or exlude those you do not want.

[VMC]

Thank you for all the suggestions but I need to get work done, I cannot read 20 pages beginner guide just to find some files. I just want a simple input field where I can put in *.* and restrict the result by date. Simple, you know, like usable for the average human, simple like in Windows 3.1. I am definitely not using that terminal like I want to code BASIC on a C64

Why again did you leave Windows? Installing Linux without any knowledge of its usage is going to take sum time, as in research, and reading.

Linux For Dummies perhaps.

[firesdhgsht]

Why again did you leave Windows? Installing Linux without any knowledge of its usage is going to take same time

... because just like I do not need to read the 400 pages manual on a Volvo only because I drove a Merc before

So I opened that "hideous" terminal and got my list of files (I still cant believe that there is no GUI that can do that, unreal ). How do I move that list to Dolphin so I can create a zip? Thanks

[Holger_Gehrke]

How do I move that list to Dolphin so I can create a zip? Thanks

Why go to that trouble when you can just let 'find' do it ? 'find' has an option '-exec' which will execute a program with the found files as parameters. So you could run

find /home/$USER -name "*.txt"  -newermt "2024-01-01" -exec zip archive.zip \{\} \+

and that should produce an archive.zip in the current working directory with all the files 'find' has found .

And switching operating systems isn't like switching to a different brand of the same product, it's more like going to a different country ... a lot of things might be similar, but there are differences. With Linux the command line - which Windows has mostly abandoned - is alive and well and considered the ultimate power tool. This is mostly because it's a lot easier to write tools that work from the command line then to write a GUI tool. Also a GUI just doesn't make much sense for some simple tools, e.g. 'wc' (word count) which counts characters, words, and lines in a simple text file. With a GUI that kind of program will only exist as an option in some larger program.

Holger

[Dennis N]

You say you tried it, but actually FSearch can be used to create a text file listing all the files that meet a desired last modified criteria within a certain folder (like your home folder) OR within a selection of multiple folders.

[bobunderwood99]

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