On Fri, 2024-11-22 at 09:27 +1100, Stephen Morris wrote:

Just further to this, on my system if ~/Desktop has a .desktop file
in it that is a link to a /usr/share sub-folder, the permissions tab
in properties correctly says I don't have access to the file being
linked to, but if I change any of the properties and try to save the
changes I get an access violation message on ~/Desktop, which is
rubbish as the soft link in ~/Desktop is owned by me. The error
message should say I don't have access to the file that is linked to.

 
That's going to depend on the tool you're using (how well thought out
it was).  When acting on a link you could either (a) modify the link,
(b) follow the link and act on what it points to.

One's quite obvious what to do in some circumstances:  I probably want
to edit a file I linked to with a text editor.  I probably want to see
info about a linked file when listing a directory or viewing file
permissions.

Other time's less so:  I probably want to modify the permissions of a
link, but not always.

I'm always a bit dubious about deleting a link.  I don't want the tool
to delete the file it links to.