In both Windows and Garuda Linux (KDE Plasma desktop environment), I like to customize shortcuts (Windows)/Links to Locations (Garuda) to personalize my desktop on both OSes by creating or downloading what I consider to be ‘custom’ icon images that correspond with the shortcut’s/link’s target to create icons (Windows) or use the images themselves (Garuda) when there is no default, or I don’t like the existing, icon/icon image. To that end, in Windows I created an IconImage sub-folder under my Pictures folder to have a place to keep these image files. I use the Greenfish Icon Editor Pro app to create a Windows icon using an icon image I’ve created or downloaded from the Internet.
Over this holiday season, it occurred to me that making my collection of icon image files on Windows available in Garuda Linux could save me time and duplication effort, so I decided to work out a way to make that happen.
In both Windows 11 and Garuda Linux, I sync selected folders/directories to mega.nz using their MEGAsync desktop app, (available for Windows and various GNU/Linux distributions - including the Arch-based ones). When I decided to drop One Drive, Internet searches led me to mega.nz, and I decided to try it for a variety of reasons. First, they offer a free account that provides for 20GB of storage (4 times what I get with One Drive). Second, all their accounts use end-to-end encryption, with the decryption key residing on my computer, so I’m the only one who can see my files unencrypted. Even MEGA can’t see the unencrypted content of my files. Initially I decided to test mega.nz on Garuda Linux by syncing my Documents, and Pictures directories to folders (directories) of the same names on MEGA. After some time, I found MEGA to be very stable and reliable, so I decided to adopt it for Windows too. Since I already had Documents and Pictures folders set up for Garuda on MEGA, I chose to create folders named WinDocs and WinPics on MEGA for my Documents and Pictures folders from Windows, then later I created shared syncs in both OSes for my Music folder/directory, and later I added two additional folders/directories on both OSes, one named eBooks for my eBook collection, and another named resources to keep frequently accessed/updated files (such as my Monthly Bills, Phone Numbers, and ToDo’s files). More recently, I decided to segregate my eBooks collection to separate my Windows-targeted eBooks from those targeted towards GNU/Linux, so now I have two eBooks folders, one for Windows and another for GNU/Linux, so in keeping with my folder naming conventions on mega.nz, I created a WinBooks folder for my Windows-targeted eBooks, while continuing to use the eBooks folder to sync with a similar directory on Garuda Linux.
Because my IconImages folder in Windows is a sub-folder under Pictures, and is already being synced with MEGA, I was prevented from syncing it separately as is, so I moved the IconImages folder from my Pictures folder to my Windows User space (C:\Users${user-name}) and set up a sync between it and a folder of the same name on MEGA. Finally, in Garuda Linux, I created an IconImages directory under my home directory, and synced it with the newly created folder on MEGA, then for convenience, I created a script to use rsync to copy any changed files in my IconImages directory to my Pictures directory in near real time (this is experimental, and I may decide to stop using it later).
Now I can conveniently get to all my icon image files from Windows in Garuda Linux when it’s useful, and it’s all automatically synchronized for me!
If anyone wants additional implementation details on any part of what I did, please reply,
Ernie