It would be good to have a hotkey for search (for example, /) that opens a search box somewhere on the screen.

It should be a popup dialog with a rich search, allowing you to choose whether the term is a package name, vulnerability ID, or some other metadata. Alternatively should just be using the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

I like the idea of a popup with one field and a few radio buttons for each search type.

Like Vim, pressing / the first time should bring up the search box (wherever it is). I imagine that pressing / [Enter] should go to the following result. But if we use a modal-style pop-over box, having it pop over might get annoying every time you repeat the search.

The further thought might be to have the pop-over triggered by the initial search key, with a separate key used for 'find next' or 'repeat search' and maybe another key for 'find previous'.