How can I find a file/directory that could be anywhere on linux command line? [closed]

"Unfortunately this seems to only check the current directory, not the entire folder". Presumably you mean it doesn't look in subdirectories. To fix this, use find -name "filename"

If the file in question is not in the current working directory, you can search your entire machine via

find / -name "filename"

This also works with stuff like find / -name "*.pdf", etc. Sometimes I like to pipe that into a grep statement as well (since, on my machine at least, it highlights the results), so I end up with something like

find / -name "*star*wars*" | grep star

Doing this or a similar method just helps me instantly find the filename and recognize if it is in fact the file I am looking for.

To get rid of permission errors (and such), you can redirect stderr to nowhere

find / -name "something" 2>/dev/null