Eureka!
Charly's Column – find and fd
Fd is an uncomplicated find replacement that discovers lost treasures in the filesystem in next to no time. Charly would love to deploy an amazing tool like this in the analog world of his office.
I'm not very good at sorting things sensibly and then finding them again – both in my office and on my computers' filesystems. For the latter, at least I have electronic help in the form of tools like find and, more recently, fd.
The find command existed on Unix systems long before Linux was invented – in fact, it's older than most of the people who use it. On many of my systems, there is a directory named /test where I try things out. Anything that proves useful is sent to Git; the rest just hangs around gathering dust until the cron job in Listing 1 sweeps it away without write access after 365 days.
While doffing a hat to the now impressive power of the GNU implementation of find [1], you still sometimes find yourself wishing for a tool that can perhaps do a little less, but one that is more intuitive to use. This is where fd [2] jumps into the breach. The compact younger sibling of find, fd has already made its way into many distributions, but often only recently. In Ubuntu, it is available starting with version 19.04, for example.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.
-
RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
-
Happy Birthday, Linux
On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
-
VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
-
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
-
Debian 13.0 Officially Released
After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
-
Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
-
A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.