Integrate ownCloud in Ubuntu with Symbolic Links
Ever since I switched to ownCloud last year I have pretty much stopped using my local file system for any personal documents or media. This is especially handy since I typically used several different computers in a given day. The only thing that is a bit frustrating with this setup is all the wasted links that exist in Nautilus by default. This includes “Documents, Music, Downloads, Videos, etc..”. Although you can simply remove these and use the bookmarks feature of Nautilus to make new folders, there is a better way! Enter symbolic links. Symbolic links are one of the most useful and powerful parts of UNIX based systems. Using symbolic links we can simply redirect the Documents, Music, Pictures, etc folders to our ownCloud folder. This way Nautilus will show you your ownCloud files when you click on these existing links. This essentially integrates ownCloud with your native file system making it pretty transparent and seamless. This can easily be accomplished in two steps.
- Remove the existing folder (this is required to get the symbolic link working.) If you have any data in the existing folders currently be sure to back it up and/or move it because the next step ** will delete these files! **. For example, to reroute our Music folder:
rm -rf /home/$USER/Music
- Create the Symbolic Link
ln -s /home/$USER/ownCloud/Music /home/$USER/Music
ls ~/ you will see that the Music folder is now a lighter shade of blue. You can repeat this step for any additional folders. This will make your life easier and keep Nautilus nice and clean.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- Great Lakes, Illinois
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- Ladybird on Debian Stable
- Are we inside a Sarlacc?
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Clicks Communicator from Chris Hannah
- A Year Of Vibes from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- Pluralistic: A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance (18 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Moving from WordPress to Substack from charity.wtf
- Grow, Like a Tree Not a Cancer from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- Pluralistic: All the books I reviewed in 2025 (02 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- DEP-18: A proposal for Git-based collaboration in Debian from Optimized by Otto
- [RIDGELINE] No Phones in The Ten-don Shop from Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Clicks Communicator
Clicks: A new kind of mobile communicator Designed for doing, not doomscrolling. That tagline definitely got my attention. Based on the design and some of the copy, it made me think it was a more...
via Chris Hannah January 3, 2026Reminder: New Year, New URL
I mentioned it in the last post: To give this blog a more personal touch, I switched the URL to https://soeren.one. If you access through RSS feeds, bookmarks, or saved links, please take a moment to update them so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you…
via gluecko.se January 3, 2026Ink in the Stomach
Something I believe very strongly, mostly from observing changes in myself, is that, once you’ve shoved your own hands deep in the entrails of a building, you’ve permanently altered your entire relationship with the world.
via The Map is Mostly Water January 3, 2026Generated by openring