Add "Paste Shortcut" to Nautilus context menus

[John Kounis]

In Windows, you can right-click the file and drag it with the right mouse button clicked, which will then give you a context menu to "Move File", "Copy File", or "Paste Shortcut". Alternatively, you can "Copy" the file and then right-click in the destination folder and select either "Paste" or "Paste Shortcut".

The process in Nautilus is awkward. You have to select "Make Link" in the source file, find the link, and then move it to the destination folder. I usually don't bother and just make a symbolic link in the command line (I type "ln -s" and then drag the file I want to link to into the gnome-terminal window. This inserts the absolute path of the file.) However, for Windows users who are afraid of the command line, this is not an easy alternative.

Recommendation:
         Enable a context-menu when you right click and drag a file from one folder to another
 --or--
         Enable "Paste Shortcut" after you have copied a file.

[Yazen Ghannam (yghannam-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Hello John,

Thank you for taking the time to report this. It appears that this functionality can be forwarded upstream as a "Enhancement". If you have the time, please forward it and add a link here. Let me know if you require any help with that. Thank you again.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

You can drag and drop it with the middle mouse button and it will give you a menu like in windows. Therefore closing the bug. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

By the way: You can also drag it with the left mouse button and hold down [ALT] before you release the mouse button.

[judasg0at (hattwj)]

It seems to me that this sort of bug is exactly what the "Hundred Paper Cuts" project is all about. Who cares if you can paste a shortcut by clicking the 3rd mouse button, that's too obscure to be useful to an average user. Can we reverse the decision to mark this as invalid?

[bastafidli (ubuntu-bastafidli)]

I believe all the alternatives described here are completely unintuitive and require advanced knowledge (middle button, ALT key, etc). The most obvious behavior is select files, right click, copy, then go to a different destination, right click and select Past Shortcut (or Make Link). This most obvious behavior doesn't work in Ubuntu and therefore I believe this defect should be reopened.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Thank you for helping with making Ubuntu better by reporting this suggestion. I've found an upstream bug report and am linking the two bug reports to each other.
I'm setting the status to Triaged as this bug report is now sufficiently looked after by the Bug Squad for now. The importance is set to Wishlist because — even though this is a valid usability issue — this bug report isn't so much about an issue that hinders users, but more a suggestion for making the life of users easier.

I am accepting this as a papercut as fixing this bug shouldn't be too hard considering that the code can be simply copied from the middle-click drag menu — why would this be harder than a right-click drag menu? I'd be in favour for the third mouse button, really.
The status of the papercut is set to Wishlist as well, for all the same reasons.

[Vish (vish)]

Isnt the nautilus context menu already overloaded ;-)

[Oni (oni-lore)]

@Vish if we switch the 'make link' (useless) entry with 'paste as link' the situation -at least- won't change.

And I'd like to add that creating a link with the 'make link' option is impossible if you don't have write access in the directory containing what you are linking.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks a lot for reporting this, however what you describe constitutes a feature request so does not qualify as a papercut.