Trying to do odd things with symbolic links

gbrn · 05-29-2006, 06:27 AM

Hello community first of all!

I'm recently migrating to Linux, so I apologize about my win-related explanation: One of the very handy things that I much miss & can't get to work at my new Linux environment is the instant way (as I did it in Win) to let certain folders and files (or programs) open immediately through the RUN box instead of navigating through endless trees of directories or clicking on endless armies of Desktop shortcuts. I did the trick in WinXP by adding a custom path to the path-list of environmental variables and creating in the specified folder handy shortcuts to the needed folders, files, etc. so that when I type the name of a shortcut in the RUN dialog, the object runs immediately for me.
I've tried to do smth of that sort now in Fedora, by trying to force bash follow symbolic links that I've created in one of the PATH folders (/home/myaccount/bin), but it won't execute (cause they're not binary, I guess?). What about the run application dialog, I could not do with it either. Tryed to google it of course too, but no success! So is there another work-around for that problem?
Best regards!
gbrn

rkelsen · 05-29-2006, 06:33 AM

Right click on your Desktop and add a "Link to Location (URL)" which points to the directory you wish to access.

Andrew Benton · 05-29-2006, 07:04 AM

Folders would need to be opened with a file browser like nautilus so you could open them with a command like

Code:

nautilus /path/to/folder

If you wanted to run that with a single command you could put it in a script like this

Code:

#!/bin/bash
nautilus /path/to/folder

Make it executable

Code:

chmod +x /path/to/script

And move it somewhere in your path

Code:

mv /path/to/script /home/myaccount/bin

Change the name of the script to whatever command you want to use (choose a name that doesn't clash with something already in your $PATH, or one of the built in shell commands).
Same deal with files, except that you wouldn't open them with nautilus, you'd use whatever was suitable for that file type. For text files, gedit, for example.

gbrn · 05-29-2006, 10:33 AM

Thanks very much for quickly & detailed responding!

@rkelsen: could not find such an option - using Gnome.
@Andrew Benton: That is exactly what I needed & it works perfect now! Everything runs fine through the run application tool too.
Best regards