This is just a quick set of tips about the super-duper-handy locate command at, well, the command line.

First off, it’s called locate. If you don’t have it installed, it may be contained in a package called findutils-locate (a “shout-out” to all my fellow SUSE distro users)

Secondly, to manually update the locate command’s database (it automatically runs each night), you type (as root): updatedb …and wait for a while.

Thirdly, in your shell of choice, alias locate='locate -i' …and you’ll get case-insensitive locate! Combined with grep (especially grep -i; i also happens to be its case-insensitive flag too), you’ll be finding files in your hard drive quite easy from now on…

I use locate all the time, especially whenever I’m looking for a quick path to find a graphic I of which know the filename (or part of a filename). For example:

locate information | grep png | grep 48

Will return something like (depending on your distribution):

/opt/gnome/share/icons/Tango/48x48/status/dialog-information.png