this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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locateuses an index you need to update usingupdatedbbefore it is able to find anything.updatedbmay run periodically because of a cron job, but the index is probably missing right after installing it manually.Why don't filesystems maintain such a database so you don't have to spend cycles on a file indexer ?
They do. You look at it every time you see the contents of your disk. It's just organised in a tree to make path based lookups fast and locate organises its database differently to make fast basename lookups.