Linux: Symlink Between Partitions And Drives Question

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I want to install Games in .Wine via Lutris and they all look for the folder in /Home .wine. I want to install to a second drive with more storage. One suggestion was using a bash script but I have never worked with bash. Another was using a simple symlink.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/symlink-tutorial-in-linux-how-to-create-and-remove-a-symbolic-link/

I created a symlink:

ln -s /home/.wine/ /media/user/extradrive1/WineGames/.wine

Would something like this work?

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Yes, this works well. I do the same with my gaming laptop.

I don’t use the command line to make symlinks, though. I just drag and drop the folder or file in question, and KDE pops up a menu asking if I want to copy, move, or link here. Other desktop environments/file managers may do things differently, but once you know what the trick is, it’s a good deal easier than using the command line.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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firemind

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I saw a post about dragging and dropping a symlink so I experimented with  a file to match my code and it worked. The output:

Name: .wine

Link to target: /media/user/extradrive1/WineGames/.wine

Parent folder: /home/user/

My only issue so far is that when I first moved .wine to the HDD I didn’t create a symlink because the info I had didn’t mention one. When I logged back in later .Wine had been recreated in /Home and seemed to be an exact duplicate. I found out later that it wasn’t growing like the one in the second drive,

When I learned about symlinks I made one and renamed .wine folder .wineold. Then my desktop shortcut for the game wouldn’t work. So for now I reverted to .wine and rename the link. I will try again later with the symlink restored and a new desktop shortcut. Now I just need a small Lutris game to see if I can get that working.

i first tried making symlinks after reading how people used them to stop flatpaks from filling the OS drive. i made a link to my HDD but wonder if that will mess with the way Gnome deals with them.

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