Web search

[muted hearth]

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[mossy drift]

You can’t really “install a whole search engine” like Google (those require massive crawlers + an index), but you can install a self‑hosted meta-search web app that queries multiple public engines for you — free, open-source, and no API key.

The best option for this on Linux Mint is SearXNG.

Option A (no install): just use DuckDuckGo

If you simply want a free search engine with no key: open Firefox → set default search to DuckDuckGo.

If you specifically want something you can “install” locally, do Option B.

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Option B (install locally): SearXNG (recommended)

1) Install Docker

Open a terminal and run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y docker.io docker-compose-plugin
sudo systemctl enable --now docker

Add your user to the docker group (so you can run docker without sudo):

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and log back in (important), then test:

docker run --rm hello-world

If that prints a “Hello from Docker!” message, you’re good.

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2) Download + run SearXNG

Create a folder for it:

mkdir -p ~/searxng/{config,data}
cd ~/searxng

Pull and run the container (this keeps it accessible only on your computer, not your network):

docker pull docker.io/searxng/searxng:latest

docker run -d --name searxng \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8888:8080 \
  -v "$PWD/config:/etc/searxng" \
  -v "$PWD/data:/var/cache/searxng" \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  docker.io/searxng/searxng:latest

Now open your browser and go to:

http://localhost:8888

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3) (Optional) Make Firefox use it easily

Quick way: create a bookmark to:

http://localhost:8888/search?q=%s

Then edit that bookmark and set a Keyword like sx.
Now you can type in the address bar: sx whatever you want

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4) Stop / start / update later

docker stop searxng
docker start searxng

Update to the newest version: