The sys admin's daily grind – Searx
Peppered with Hits
It goes against the economic rationale to assume that commercial search engines have the best interests of users at heart when it comes to data protection and use. Sys admin Charly has found an alternative.
Many Linux tools with low version numbers seem astonishingly mature and stable – and they are. Searx [1], which recently bounced up to 0.10.0, is definitely one of them. The developers describe it as "a privacy-respecting, hackable meta search engine." If you enter one or multiple search terms in the search box, Searx forwards the request to up to 70 online sources. The results show you the sources from which they originate.
You can individually sort the sources by topic or disable them, if needed. In the General field, you will find the major players: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Reddit. For images, the results come from 500px, Flickr, or Deviant Art. If you are looking for music, the program taps into Deezer, Google Play Music, Spotify, SoundCloud, or half a dozen Torrent sites. IT gives you GitHub, Stack Overflow, and the excellent Arch Linux Wiki.
The Science category may be quite thinly populated, but it has some jewels in the form of Wolfram Alpha, Google Scholar, and Microsoft Academic. Base (the "Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) specializes in searching for and within scientific work. For example, a quick query for "adenosine triphosphate" provides three times more hits than a Google science search on scholar.google.com. If you like, you can prioritize results from open access sources.
[...]
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
-
Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
-
System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
-
Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
-
USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
-
Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.