[anthk]

Use Recoll for that; check the recommended dependencies from your package manager. Synaptic it's good for this with a click from the right mouse button on the package.

EDIT: For instance, under Trisquel/Ubuntu/Debian and derivatives, click on 'recollcmd', and with the right click button mark all the dependencies.

Install RecollGUI for a nice UI.

Now you will have something like Google Search but libre in your own desktop.

[hagbard_c]

To take it further install recoll-webui [1] and SearxNG [2], enable the recoll engine in the latter at point it at the former for a web-accessible search engine for local as well as remote content. Make sure to put local content behind a password or other type of authentication unless you intend for it to be searchable by outside visitors.

Source: I made the recoll engine for Searx/SearxNG and have been using this system for many years now with a full-text index over close to a terabyte worth of data.

[1] https://github.com/koniu/recoll-webui

[2] https://github.com/searxng/searxng

[gjadi]

For emacs users in the room, there is consult-recoll.