When searching for files, I often prefer using locate (because of the speed).
However, I end up opening a terminal just for that purpose and then closing it again. Not a big problem for me, but my girlfriend often forgets command names.
Is there a way to have Nautilus to use mlocate for searching?
Ideally, I'd love to have the results displayed separately (because a file in locatedb may no longer exist), but I'm ok if it doesn't.
Failing that, is there some GUI to locate?
I've not seen a way to incorporate these results into Nautilus, but there are GUIs for search in mlocate's database. The one that I'm most familiar with is called catfish. It's generally in most of the standard distros' repos. The main website is here, titled: Catfish is a versatile file searching tool.. The project's Launchpad site is another additional resource if needed.
excerpt from website
Catfish is a search GUI powered by locate and find behind the scenes, with autocompletion from Zeitgeist and locate. The advanced options allow filtering by date and file type. The interface is intentionally lightweight and simple, using only GTK+.
