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
- 2024
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- How to Disable Wayland in Debian Testing
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Underused Techniques for Effective Emails from Refactoring English
- Death by a thousand slops from daniel.haxx.se
- The AGI economy is coming faster than you think from Freethink
- Rolling the ladder up behind us from Xe Iaso's blog
- In Praise of “Normal” Engineers from charity.wtf
- Reports of Bluesky's death have been greatly exaggerated from The Torment Nexus
- What Would a Kubernetes 2.0 Look Like from matduggan.com
- We Can Just Measure Things from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
The surprise deprecation of GPT-4o for ChatGPT consumers
I've been dipping into the r/ChatGPT subreddit recently to see how people are reacting to the GPT-5 launch, and so far the vibes there are not good. This AMA thread with the OpenAI team is a great illustration of the single biggest complaint: a lot of…
via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries August 8, 2025How long does it take to upgrade an eBook?
The older I get, the more comfortable I become with complaining. Not merely moaning on social media, but writing a direct email to the perpetrator of some annoyance. I'd purchased an eBook and was appalled by how crappy the accessibility was. If you …
via Terence Eden’s Blog August 8, 2025P&B: Alexandra
This is the 102nd edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Alexandra and her blog, xandra.cc To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new inte…
via Manuel Moreale August 8, 2025Generated by openring