Nautilus has lost a function with the move to Wayland: creating symlinks by drag and drop.
I should note that Windows allows you to create shortcuts, and macOS allows you to create aliases, by drag and drop.
This regression is due in part to a difference between XDND and Wayland drag and drop. The latter does not have linking as an option by default. Mutter would have to extend the protocol and Nautilus would have to use that extension. I think the change should happen on Wayland.
There’s an existing issue for this, but it’s been reassigned to Mutter and the title has been changed to not reflect the reported issue.
In case this isn’t possible with drag and drop, maybe have an experience where one selects “Create link” and then selects the destination? What do you think of this alternative?
Don’t forget to also open a topic about launching scripts with files by DnD.
“Create Link” would be fine as a second or third way to do this. It would be a shame for drag-and-drop on GNOME not to be at least as useful as it is on Windows.
Searching for a different drag and drop issue, I found there is another report of this issue that has been closed:
There’s another regression, apparently because of GTK4, that I hadn’t noticed. It seems the ASK option is gone now. I personally never use this on Linux, so I don’t remember the details. Apparently the trigger was to hold the Alt key when dropping. This would pop-up a menu with options for the drop.
On Windows, this happens when you use the right-click mouse button to drag.
It seems the problem is specific to GTK4:
Traditionally, ASK pops up a menu where the drop happened. But under GTK4, attaching popover menus to random widgets is not trivial to get right.
I’m not yet familiar with GTK4, but that sounds odd to me because I would think the menu would be attached to the pointer, not a widget. I really haven’t looked at the code since Gtk2.x days.
