When comparing The Silver Searcher vs DocFetcher, the Slant community recommends The Silver Searcher for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop search tools for Linux?” The Silver Searcher is ranked 2nd while DocFetcher is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose The Silver Searcher is:
The Silver Searcher is lightning fast.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Speed
The Silver Searcher is lightning fast.
Pro Idiot proof
"ag searchterm" - it's that simple in its purest form.
Pro Support VCS ignore files
Ag can speed up by ignoring files matched by pattern in ".agignore" (deprecated), ".ignore" (since ag-v0.33.0), and VCS ignore files (.gitignore, .git/info/exclude, .hgignore, svn:ignore).
Pro Good overview of results
Grouped by file, highlighted with background color, linenumbers by default
Pro Cross-platform
DocFetcher is available for both Windows and Linux operating systems, making it a valuable portable tool for people who use both operating systems.
Cons
Con Indexes only documents
DocFetcher only indexes documents, with pictures, videos, audio files etc... being omitted.