How to create working shortcuts

Okay I've got it figured it out, mostly thanks to the help of the folks over at Ubuntu Forums. I'm going to write it here for posterity, although I do still think a lot of this should be included with Ubuntu.

Links don't work

I haven't been able to figure those out, creating a link to an application and moving the link outside the current folder causes a lot of problems. In my particular case, Ubuntu thought the application was being launched from the location of the Link which meant that the application couldn't load its data.

I just kind of gave up on the idea of getting these to work as they just don't seem reliable enough. Either way, getting Terminal Command Shortcuts is much better.

Right Click to Create Shortcut

Thanks to user mc4man on Ubuntu Forums for this.

  1. Install the correct filemanager-actions you need by following this guide (the default Ubuntu file explorer is Nautilus)
  2. Run fma-config-tool

Then just set it up like this:

enter image description here

enter image description here

This will add an option when right-clicking inside Nautilus that will bring up the Shortcut creator app to add a shortcut in the current folder. This option will be in a sub-menu by default, but you can go into Edit -> Preferences -> Runtime Preferences and deselect "Create a root filemanager-actions menu"

enter image description here

Creating Shortcuts for Programs that don't start with a program

Programs running through Wine often require to launch a command with "WINEPREFIX=/path/to/prefix", this causes problems when trying to create shortcuts for them because they just won't get recognised as programs and fail to start.

There's an easy fix for that. Instead of creating a command for

WINEPREFIX="/home/leonardo/Photoshop" wine64  "/home/leonardo/Photoshop/Photoshop.exe"

You can just add env at the start:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/leonardo/Photoshop" wine64  "/home/leonardo/Photoshop/Photoshop.exe"

This will work.

Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo Update

Updating this because GNOME's dumb and they changed how shortcuts work. The above to launch wine applications will not work if the shortcut is launched from Desktop/Nautilus.

Take the .desktop file you just created and move it inside /home/leonardo/.local/share/applications. This will add the shortcut to your application list and you'll be able to start it there.