Is there a difference between a symbolic link via terminal or right-click make link?

Solution 1:

There is very little difference. To test this I created a new directory with a file "bug3.odt".

I then created two links to it using the command line

ln -s bug3.odt bug_ln and ln -s /home/warren/qaz/bug3.odt bug_ln2 then finally went into nautilus and created a link by right clicking on the file and selecting "Make Link".

The result was as follows

warren@dell:~/qaz$ ls -la
total 36
drwxrwxr-x  2 warren warren  4096 Feb 18 20:14 .
drwxr-xr-x 69 warren warren 12288 Feb 18 20:11 ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 warren warren 18505 Nov 12 20:11 bug3.odt
lrwxrwxrwx  1 warren warren     8 Feb 18 20:12 bug_ln -> bug3.odt
lrwxrwxrwx  1 warren warren    25 Feb 18 20:14 bug_ln2 -> /home/warren/qaz/bug3.odt
lrwxrwxrwx  1 warren warren    25 Feb 18 20:13 Link to bug3.odt -> /home/warren/qaz/bug3.odt

As you can see both bug_ln2 and Link to bug3.odt have the same owner, group, permissions and link to the same location. Right clicking in nautilus is equivalent to using ln -s with the full path to the file.

It is also possible to create a link by holding down CTRL+SHIFT and dragging the file. This works in exactly the same way: equivalent to using ln -s with the full path to the file.

Solution 2:

No, there isn't. It's just Nautilus GUI option to create a symlink.