DupeGuru

dupeGuru

dupeGuru, dupeGuru Music Edition, and dupeGuru Pictures Edition

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Yes, we’re going to recommend dupeGuru once again.

• It’s an open-source and cross-platform tool that’s so useful we’ve already recommended it for finding duplicate files on Windows and cleaning up duplicate files on a Mac.

dupeGuru is a bit less convenient because it’s not available in most Linux distributions’ software repositories — although it is available in Arch Linux’s repositories.

• However, the dupeGuru website offers a PPA that lets you easily install their software packages on Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions.
• Users of other Linux distributions could even compile it from source.

As on Windows and Mac, dupeGuru offers three different editions — a standard edition for basic duplicate-file-scanning, an edition designed for finding duplicate songs that may have been ripped or encoded differently, and an edition intended for finding similar photos that have been rotated, resized, or otherwise modified.

• You can get them all from the dupeGuru website, and all three are available in the Ubuntu PPA.

This application works just as it does on other platforms.

• Launch it, add one or more folders to scan, and click Scan.
• You’ll see a list of duplicate files, and you can check them off and remove them — or move them to other platforms.
• You can also easily open and examine the file with a double-click.

After installation, the Ubuntu package must be launched from a command line — for example, with the dupeguru_se command for the standard edition.

• There appears to be no desktop shortcut installed by default.
• This lack of system integration is the only reason we can’t recommend this utility more highly, as it works well once you get it installed and launched.

As you might expect, this isn’t a complete list.

• You’ll find many other duplicate-file-finding utilities — mostly commands without a graphical interface — in your Linux distribution’s package manager.
• Unless you have specific needs, the above tools are our favorites and the ones we recommend.