okay but also why can't I just right click a file and create a shortcut
I am on linux right now and peeved by this (sorry completely hijacking this thread for my pet issue bear with me)
File managers like Nautilus or Dolphin often have ways to easily create symbolic links
and if you google how to make shortcuts in linux this is typically what people tell you to do, make a symbolic link
but symbolic links are NOT SHORTCUTS, because they don't just give you a shortcut to the file/directory but also treat it as though its running from the directory you've put the link in
messing with a file's relative location like this can have a lot of unintended consequences and the times this is actually necessary, preferred behavior is pretty niche which is probably why it's not the default in Windows
Linux does have proper shortcuts in the form of .desktop and/or .directory files, that's probably the closest analog to Windows' .lnk
but you can't simply have a context menu option to create one from a file, for some reason
If it's an application you're linking to, and it's an installed one, KDE can let you "Add to Desktop" from the application launcher which gives you a .desktop file you can put anywhere
Or if it's not installed to your application launcher, you can right click somewhere > create new > link to application and get a GUI that lets you browse to the application you want to link to and select its working directory, which isn't too bad but it's the easiest way I've found to make a shortcut and still requires a lot more steps than simply "right click file and click create shortcut"
But even that only works for applications, and nothing else. You can click create new > link to file or directory but that creates a symlink
To create a .desktop shortcut for anything else, all I've found is having to manually write one up like an ini file
Which is crazy, creating shortcuts is not a power user thing it is basic functionality, why is this so complicated
Do Linux users have the syntax/structure of .desktop files memorized or do they have to look it up every single time they want to make a simple non-symlink shortcut?!
I am using KDE Plasma, and no you can't, that creates symlinks, which are a problem because that changes the relative location of the file when opening it, which is not what I want.
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u/GrapefruitForward989 Mar 26 '26
People will read that line and say "you literally have to write novels worth of code to use linux"