448
Rule
(lemmy.nz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
448 points (96.3% liked)
linuxmemes
32616 readers
474 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated. This is an LGBTQ+-friendly community -- if that is a problem for you, you should leave.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
- Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves / tolerates / hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. 🇬🇧 Language/язык/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇺🇸
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations. - Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
- We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
- Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed.
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
With Arch, if you have the Yay manager, you can do “yay ” and it’ll search not just the names of packages but the descriptions too. I’m sure there’s equivalents for other distros, and even with pacman itself
There's apt-cache search, but I just prefer doing it with the package manager tbh :p
Consider trying
apt list ~nvim. Wherevimis, is where the package name goes ~IMO apt's search is just not very good at that (or at least it's unintuitive). Even if you know the name of the program,
apt-cache searchoften shows like 90% irrelevant results.According to the man-page at https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/apt.8.en.html and the linked https://manpages.debian.org/buster/manpages/regex.7.en.html, you should be able to use regex like
apt search '(-|^)vim(-|$)'to getvimas either whole name or related packages with containingvimwith leading or trailing dashes, orapt search '^vim'to get any beginning withvim—in case that helps.zypperlets me do essentially that withzypper se '/(-|^)vim(-|$)/'and such.... I'll just duckduckgo it instead.
(I do sometimes use
apt-cache search ^[applicationname], but depending on the application it might not help as much as you'd think, and it requires that you know what specific application you want, vs. something general like 'a cd burning application')I understand what you mean, and tend to agree, although I had some success with
zypper se -d '/CD.*burn/'—'CD.*(burn)|(writer)'produced more results than I'd like—for your example. It also appearsapt-cache searchalready searches descriptions by default.Looking at results for just
/CD/—amid the many poor results—it seems my earlier search missed some due to differing word usage, such as recording rather than burning, and whatnot.