How do I open Windows shortcuts? (.lnk files)

Question

There are some files from windows that I'd like to open on ubuntu. I went to my Windows desktop and found the files that I needed, but they were all .lnk. Ubuntu doesn't recognize these, so I can't trace them back to their origin and open them with wine. I'm on version 15.10, but I'm gonna upgrade 16.04 soon, though.

Answer 1

On Ubuntu, the larger issue with using Windows shortcut files (a.k.a. .lnk files or shell links) is that they may point to paths that do not exist on Ubuntu, such as C:\Program Files. Relative paths might be analogous, but then there is the path separator problem (\ and /), case-insensitive semantics to deal with (on Windows, "Program Files" and "program files" are the same folder), and encoding issues (what if the path contains characters besides ASCII?). So even if file managers on Ubuntu supported the proprietary format to get the file paths, that wouldn't mean the shortcut would work on Ubuntu, since paths are not always portable.

That said, the file command will give you basic information about a link file.

$ file 'Program Files - Shortcut.lnk'
Program Files - Shortcut.lnk: MS Windows shortcut, Item id list present, Points to a file or directory, Has Relative path, Read-Only, Directory, ctime=Tue Jul 14 09:20:08 2009, mtime=Wed Apr 24 03:36:46 2019, atime=Wed Apr 24 03:36:46 2019, length=12288, window=hide

For more thorough information, you can use the lnkinfo program from the liblnk-utils package. Look for the "Local path" and "Relative path" to trace where they were pointing to. Here is an example of the lnkinfo output to show what I mean:

$ lnkinfo 'Program Files - Shortcut.lnk'
lnkinfo 20171101

Windows Shortcut information:
        Contains a link target identifier
        Contains a relative path string

Link information:
        Creation time           : Jul 14, 2009 03:20:08.555426400 UTC
        Modification time       : Apr 23, 2019 21:36:46.017274100 UTC
        Access time         : Apr 23, 2019 21:36:46.017274100 UTC
        File size           : 12288 bytes
        Icon index          : 0
        Show Window value       : 0x00003000
        Hot Key value           : 12288
        File attribute flags        : 0x00000011
                Is read-only (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READ_ONLY)
                Is directory (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
        Drive type          : Fixed (3)
        Drive serial number     : 0x0e1909c6
        Volume label            : Local Disk
        Local path          : C:\Program Files
        Relative path           : ..\..\..\Program Files

Link target identifier:
        Shell item list
                Number of items     : 3

        Shell item: 1
                Item type       : Root folder
                Class type indicator    : 0x1f (Root folder)
                Shell folder identifier : 20d04fe0-3aea-1069-a2d8-08002b30309d
                Shell folder name   : My Computer

        Shell item: 2
                Item type       : Volume
                Class type indicator    : 0x2f (Volume)
                Volume name     : C:\

        Shell item: 3
                Item type       : File entry
                Class type indicator    : 0x31 (File entry: Directory)
                Name            : PROGRA~1
                Modification time   : Apr 23, 2019 21:36:48
                File attribute flags    : 0x00000011
                        Is read-only (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READ_ONLY)
                        Is directory (FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
        Extension block: 1
                Signature       : 0xbeef0004 (File entry extension)
                Long name       : Program Files
                Localized name      : @shell32.dll,-21781
                Creation time       : Jul 14, 2009 03:20:10
                Access time     : Apr 23, 2019 21:36:48
                NTFS file reference : MFT entry: 878, sequence: 1



Distributed link tracking data:
        Machine identifier      : nathaniel-pc
        Droid volume identifier     : b2638d5e-f5b8-480c-bda0-fdb25ab91131
        Droid file identifier       : 968b84a2-a646-11e9-a124-0021cc6948e3
        Birth droid volume identifier   : b2638d5e-f5b8-480c-bda0-fdb25ab91131
        Birth droid file identifier : 968b84a2-a646-11e9-a124-0021cc6948e3

Answer 2

By default, programs in Windows are installed to one of these two locations:

C:\Program Files
C:\Program Files (x86)

(The second one will only exist if you have a 64-bit installation.)

On Ubuntu, these paths translate to:

WindowsDriveName >> /Program Files
WindowsDriveName >> /Program Files (x86)

You'll be able to find your programs in either of these folders.

Keep in mind: Many Windows programs can only be run in the environment where they were installed. That means that opening a program in Ubuntu that's been installed in Windows may not work correctly, if at all.

The best thing to do is just to use Wine to run the setup program for the app you want, so that it has its own environment in Ubuntu.

Answer 3

This is an example of a desktop entry created when installing Epic Games Launcher, this is simply an example.

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_US]=
Comment=
Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/whitequill/Games/epic-games-store" wine C:\\\\Users\\\\whitequill\\\\AppData\\\\Roaming\\\\Microsoft\\\\Windows\\\\Start\\ Menu\\\\Programs\\\\Epic\\ Games\\ Launcher.lnk
GenericName[en_US]=
GenericName=
Icon=ED2E_EpicGamesLauncher.0
MimeType=
Name[en_US]=Epic Games Launcher
Name=Epic Games Launcher
Path=/home/whitequill/Games/epic-games-store/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Epic Games/Launcher/Portal/Binaries/Win64/
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=EpicGamesLauncher.exe
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

As can be seen in the example the command under Exec is:

Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/whitequill/Games/epic-games-store" wine C:\\\\Users\\\\whitequill\\\\AppData\\\\Roaming\\\\Microsoft\\\\Windows\\\\Start\\ Menu\\\\Programs\\\\Epic\\ Games\\ Launcher.lnk

This shows executing a lnk file from a desktop script as for the lnk file. I would suggest following the information here: Ubuntu 20.04 - WineHQ 6.0 - Create .lnk shortcut for a program Which has the following script:

lnk () {
        cat <<EOF > /tmp/shortcut.vbs
    Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    TargetPath = FSO.GetAbsolutePathName(WScript.Arguments(0))
    WorkingDirectory = FSO.GetParentFolderName(TargetPath)
    Set lnk = CreateObject("WScript.Shell").CreateShortcut(WScript.Arguments(1))
        lnk.TargetPath = TargetPath
        lnk.WorkingDirectory = WorkingDirectory
        lnk.Save
    EOF
        wine wscript '//B' 'Z:\tmp\shortcut.vbs' "$@" 2> /dev/null
        local exit_code=$?
        sync; rm -f /tmp/shortcut.vbs; sync
        return $exit_code
    }

The following script for creating a lnk file is used to create a new lnk because the lnk is probably not going to work. In this example I was trying to run the Epic Games store and I needed to create a new link which looked like so:

lnk 'Z:\home\whitequill\Games\epic-games-store\drive_c\Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\Launcher\Portal\Binaries\Win64\EpicGamesLauncher.exe' 'Z:\home\whitequill\Games\epic-games-store\drive_c\Users\whitequill\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Epic Games Launcher.lnk'

This is how you can you make a Desktop Entry which runs a windows shortcut, (.lnk) file.