GitHub - searxng/searxng: SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.
github.com
SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. - searxng/searxng

Documentation: https://docs.searxng.org/index.html

I finally self host my own private instance of the meta search engine SearXNG. I did not install it manually, so there is not this deep understanding how it works or anything like that. But at least its compiled from source and runs on my local machine.

Thanks to the AUR script: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/searxng-git (View PKGBUILD install script) Now I can use the search engine in my web browser at the configured address. It was surprising easy and quick process (thanks to this script). There are other methods of installing too, official: https://docs.searxng.org/admin/installation.html

# Archlinux, AUR

# Build and install from source:
yay searxng-git

# Configure the search engine (shouldn't need to):
sudoedit /etc/searxng/settings.yml

# Start server when needed:
systemctl start searxng.service

# Or automatically start the server whenever you login:
systemctl enable searxng.service

This feels so good and liberating. Before that I was using DuckDuckGo, then tried Startpage and then used public instances of SearXNG. So I still had to trust them. The only downside is, that my IP is still known to any search engine I have enabled in SearXNG. I could enable Proton VPN for that, but I’m not enabling and disabling VPN each time I want to do a websearch.

The next logical step would be to have a dedicated server machine to run this (and possibly other servers) and access it from the web on any other computer I want to. But that is something I’m not getting into right now.

  • kyonshi@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    3 hours ago

    I am running one myself and it mostly has replaced my normal search engine use. Image search is possible but incredibly slow, it often is easier to just go to Google or duckduckgo instead.
    Some of the search engines will quickly limit you if you search more often, you better check out which ones work for you and which don’t. If I want to buy products of any kind I normally use Google as I noticed I never get any good results.

  • varnia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    7·
    12 hours ago

    There also is a docker version to make it available for your whole network or even reachable from outside behind a reverse proxy. I use it on all my devices. You can use Basic Auth or a Client Certificate if you are concerned about security.

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      11 hours ago

      First I wanted to install with podman, but the instructions wasn’t clear about it. And I’m not very familiar with docker much, just used podman to build a cross platform app with Rust (little unrelated I know). So I could not figure this out and looked into the AUR. To my luck that worked out pretty well. Maybe I will look into the docker again in the future, if I want do a cross device installation (access from other devices). Right now, I’m not comfortable doing that.