How does one create a desktop shortcut to another computer in Linux?

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[Cybertooth]

Networking a Linux computer to a Windows LAN used to be so simple: I could call up the file manager (in my case, Dolphin in Kubuntu) and it would find the Windows Workgroup, no problem. Any shared folders in Windows PCs would just show up. And Windows PCs would find the Public folder on my Linux machine.

Anymore, local networking is a nightmare. At some point in the last two years, my Kubuntu system stopped being able to connect to the rest of the network; the Workgroup is no longer recognized, and clicking on “Shared Folders (SMB)” yields nothing, which is even less than last year when it would scan the network and at least return an error message.

About a year ago, I spent weeks researching and trying to figure out how to get Kubuntu to see my Windows machines. Never got it to work.

More recently, by chance I found out that in Windows I could right-click on the Desktop, select New –> Shortcut, and then enter the desired computer’s numeric address in the LAN to get me to it. But this doesn’t work in Kubuntu as there is no evident way to create a desktop shortcut of any kind from the desktop.

So for the Linux connoisseurs here, do you know if there’s a simple, quick way to create a desktop shortcut to another computer’s shared folders on the network? Details specific to Kubuntu or to the Plasma desktop environment would be most useful.

Thanks in advance for any info or insights.

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• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Cybertooth.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Cybertooth.

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Right click the background of the desktop, select Create New, then point to Link to Application at the bottom.

Name it whatever you want (in the first tab, General), then in the Application tab, put dolphin in the Program field and smb://192.168.100.1 in the ‘Arguments’ field (of course, change it to your share’s local IP), and press Ok. That should do it!

I used to mess with smb stuff a lot, and I still do use smb for backups over the LAN, but for general purpose file zipping around stuff, I find it much easier just to use KDE Connect.

With KDE Connect, I just right click the file I want to send in Dolphin, select  “Send to” the PC from the context menu, and zap! it’s there. I use it to use one of my laptops as a remote keyboard for my main PC (also a laptop, but it usually has the lid closed), to open URLs from any given browser on another laptop, use my phone as a touchpad for one of them, to send a text message on my phone via my computer (with an actual keyboard), which is not terribly useful, as I don’t text as a rule, but it’s a neat parlor trick.

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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@Ascaris, thanks for the information.

The thing is, I don’t seem to have any of the options that you mentioned: when I right-click on an empty area on the Desktop, the context menu offers no option named “Create New”, and in Dolphin when I right-click on a document file, there’s no option in that context menu to “Send to” anywhere. In the latter, there is a Share –> Send To Device item, but when selecting it I am informed that “No devices found”. It appears to be intended for smartphones and the like?

In case it helps, I’m on Kubuntu 22.04 LTS, using KDE Plasma 25.4.7. Here’s a photo of the desktop right-click context menu:

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Are you using a folder view layout (under “configure desktop and wallpaper” in the context menu shown)?

If so, oops! I didn’t think it had changed that much since then. Neon (which I use) uses Plasma 5.27.10. I guess you would have to navigate to ~/Desktop (your Desktop folder in your home folder) and right click from there. Any files or links added there will also appear on the desktop if you are using the folder view layout.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
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When I select Configure Desktop and Wallpaper, the first choice listed is Wallpaper. In the right-hand panel of that window, there are three selectable drop-down menus, and the first one lists “Desktop” and “Folder View”. Of these, Desktop was selected as the default.

I just now made the mistake of switching the selection to Folder View, and all the desktop icons got bunched up in the top left corner of the screen. Switching back to Desktop didn’t put them back where they had been. So right now I am worse off than before I tried to do anything!

I also navigated to ~/Desktop in Dolphin and tried creating a New Folder, but nothing I entered there actually got me to a Windows PC. First I tried entering smb://192.xxx.y.zzz, then just entering //192.xxx.y.zzz, and finally 192.xxx.y.zzz. None of these showed me anything on the PC. (x, y, and z are of course placeholders for the actual numerals I entered.)

 

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I’ve never used “Desktop” mode on Plasma. I had always thought Folder view was the default… are you sure it was Desktop? I think it just allows widgets, which would be a jarring change for those coming from Windows (like the default setting of launching on single click that, for some reason, they are wedded to). Folder View is analogous to the way Windows does it, where the contents of the Desktop folder are seen on the desktop.

Edit: I just looked it up, and apparently, Desktop mode was the default from Plasma 4.0 to 5.9, and from 5.10 on, Folder View was the default.

I am not sure why you created a new folder. Was there no option to create a new shortcut to application? If you enter smb://192.168.x.x into the Dolphin URL, does it work?

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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The best way to access any device on network is to assign fix IP.

For example : accessing Networked Android device.

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Alex5723 wrote:

The best way to access any device on network is to assign fix IP.

I’d like to give that a try. How does one do it?

 

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Ascaris wrote:

I am not sure why you created a new folder. Was there no option to create a new shortcut to application? If you enter smb://192.168.x.x into the Dolphin URL, does it work?

1) I tried creating a New Folder because I was trying different things to see if any of them worked.

2) When right-clicking in an empty spot under Desktop in Dolphin, one of the options under Create New is “Link to Application”. I wasn’t trying to link to an “application” but rather to a computer, so I ignored it. In any case, selecting Link to Application shows a small window that doesn’t seem to have any relation to what I’m trying to do. The title bar reads, “Properties for Program.desktop”. Under Create New, there is also a choice to create a “Link to Location (URL)”, but nothing I’ve entered in there has helped: entering smb://192.168.x.x there yields the same result as in item (3) below.

3) Entering smb://192.168.x.x into Dolphin brings up an Authentication Dialog asking for a username and password. The PC I’m trying to connect to doesn’t have a password associated with it, and I wouldn’t know what to input as Username there anyway. Ignoring the request and hitting OK simply brings the same dialog back up. Since I’m trying to access a shared folder on that PC, I don’t understand why a password would be needed in the first place.

I also tried creating a link to smb://192.168.x.x/Users/Public, and it didn’t help. After canceling the authentication dialog, a message appeared in Dolphin saying that access was denied.

The most frustrating aspect of all of this is that I can easily do it in the opposite direction: I can create desktop shortcuts to the Kubuntu system on my Windows PCs, no muss no fuss. It would just be nice to have the flexibility to be sitting at ANY computer on my LAN and be able to move files back and forth at will, without needing to jump through hoops or having to walk to the target computer that can actually navigate to the Kubuntu machine. I’d like to be able to push files from the Kubuntu computer to a Windows PC, rather than having to go to the Windows PC in order to pull the files from the Kubuntu system.

 

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Cybertooth wrote:

2) When right-clicking in an empty spot under Desktop in Dolphin, one of the options under Create New is “Link to Application”. I wasn’t trying to link to an “application” but rather to a computer, so I ignored it.

Well… when you asked how to do it, I told you how to use “link to application” to do what you wanted by linking to Dolphin and using the SMB:// URL as a parameter to link to the PC.

That would do the same thing as entering the URL in Dolphin, which is actually it working from the Linux PC end, which brings up the password dialog.

I had that issue too from way back. As I remember, it was futile to have an open network share that had no password assigned, as the Windows networking would demand one whether or not there was actually one to provide. I seem to remember there being a group policy about this (I was using Windows 8.1 Pro at the time, if I recall).

My LAN is completely within my house and no one has access to it but me, so passwords and security and all of that hullabaloo is just a waste of time to me… but much like how Microsoft has decided to eliminate SMB v1 from everyone’s PC regardless of whether the security-related reasons for doing so even apply, they’ve apparently decided that the Windows share demand a password even if none is set.

I ended up giving in and setting a trivial password of a single character. It was the only way I could make it work.

As for the login credentials, it would be for whatever account owns the share on the Windows computer, or that is on the ACL for it, I guess.

Also, about KDE connect: It has a Windows client also, so you can use it to push files to Windows.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
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Cybertooth wrote:

I’d like to give that a try. How does one do it?

https://www.howtogeek.com/19249/how-to-assign-a-static-ip-address-in-windows/

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I tried setting a static IP address on a Windows 10 machine using those instructions, including the part about checking the box to “validate settings upon exit”. As soon as I closed the dialog box, a Windows troubleshooter popped up offering to “fix” my settings for me. I allowed it to apply the fix… and the IPv4 settings had reverted back to DHCP.

Next, I repeated the process but without checking the “validate” box. Linux still cannot connect to that PC, “no shared folders found”

Going back now to DHCP, as some websites claim that it’s safer than a static IP address (although I suspect this precaution is really aimed at Internet-facing servers).

 

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Ascaris wrote:

Well… when you asked how to do it, I told you how to use “link to application” to do what you wanted by linking to Dolphin and using the SMB:// URL as a parameter to link to the PC.

Well, now I know that the idea was to link to Dolphin.    All along, I’ve been seeking to connect to a computer, not an application. Please bear in mind that this stuff isn’t second-nature to me!

Here’s a screenshot of the dialog box that appears when I select Create New –> Link to Application, in Dolphin on the Desktop folder. The Application tab is selected with all the fields blank. How to proceed by using the “Link to Application” route? I imagine that the most critical ones to get right would be the “Command” and “Work Path” fields:

 

UPDATE: I installed KDE Connect on one of the PCs that I’m trying to browse to from Kubuntu. After launching it, KDE Connect did not find anything to pair, including the Kubuntu machine. And the KDE Connect on the Kubuntu machine didn’t find the Windows PC where I’d just installed that program.

 

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Sorry if it sounded harsh. That was certainly not my intent. You are right, sometimes I forget that some of these things in computing are not self-evident to everyone.

When you create a link to an application, it does not just mean to launch that application like from the main menu. If you give it a parameter, a link to an application can also be a link to anything that application does… like connect to a SMB (server message block, otherwise known as Windows networking) share.

In this case, since Dolphin is what is being used to connect to the SMB share, by specifying to launch Dolphin with the argument of smb://192.168.1.1 (for example), it is like entering ‘dolphin smb://192.168.1.1’ on the command line, which tells Dolphin to launch and to use the SMB protocol to handle the IP 192.168.1.1, which Dolphin knows how to do, since that is what is the default handler in a KDE system for SMB.

To do that with a Link to Application, in the command field, enter ‘dolphin’, and under arguments , enter ‘smb://192.168.x.x’, with the actual IP inserted. Don’t enter the half quotes, just what is between them (I tried using the code tag in the other post, but it just looks weird on this site). The other fields on that tab can remain blank, and of course you can enter anything you want for the name of the link in the first tab, General.

But… I did try creating a link using the location (URL) option too. That works to launch a if I just enter the smb://192.168.x.x bit in the URL location field. When you execute that link, it tells the system to use the default application that is set to handle the SMB protocol and to go to that IP. Since Dolphin is the default handler for SMB, it will do the same thing as the other shortcut. But if you were to change the default SMB protocol handler (the program that will be going to that location using the SMB protocol, the same way a browser is the HTTP protocol handler for web URLs) to some other application, the application one would still do it in Dolphin, while the link to URL would use whatever your new program choice is.

The URL method is probably easier, assuming it works.

As far as using static IPs for devices on the network… That is usually done at the router/wifi access point. I have mine set to do that, and in particular with any PC that will be hosting any SMB shares (like my backup server, which I am pretty much deprecating in favor of a 16GB external HDD, which will arrive later today hopefully). If you try to do it in the settings for the PC itself and not the router, the router will still be using DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) to assign a local IP to the PC, but that PC will also be trying to set its own static IP, and it will not work well at all.

You could also set the router to not use DHCP, which would allow you to set the IP of each device on the network yourself, but the downside to that is that you would have to do it for each device. I use DHCP reservations in my router, which still uses DHCP, so any phone, tablet, PC, etc., can still connect and work normally (if they have the password of course), but I can reserve certain IPs for certain MAC addresses. When the router encounters a MAC address that is not in its list of DHCP reservations, it will assign it to the first available address that is not reserved. If it does recognize the MAC address of a given unit, it assigns it the IP that I told it to use for that MAC ID.

Most routers should have this ability, unless maybe it is one that is completely controlled by the internet provider, even for the LAN stuff (which I have never seen personally, but I have heard of it). If I had to put up with that, I would just use their router as a modem and daisy chain my own router in that case.

My ISP does provide a modem/router (at no cost to me, which is nice), but I still have full control over it, fortunately. My personal router is faster on WIFI (AC) and has way more configurability (I use DD-WRT, an aftermarket firmware),  so I set the ISP unit to just be a modem (they call it transparent bridge mode) and let my router do the router-y stuff.

Hope this helps!

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Thanks very much for the detailed explanation!

OK, I tried using the Link to Application method and here’s what happened:

After entering the name of the PC I’m trying to connect to in the “Name” field, then “dolphin” in the Command field and “smb://192.168.x.x.” in the “Work Path” field (there wasn’t any field labeled “Arguments”; the x’s of course stand for the actual parts of the IP address), a new item appeared in Desktop in Dolphin under the label, “Link to Application.desktop”.

Clicking on this item there led to a pop-up box asking me, “What do you wish to do with this file?” with the choices to Open, Execute, or Cancel. Selecting Open simply launched Kate so that I could edit the contents of the file. Selecting Execute led to a new pop-up reporting:

Unknown error 100

chdir: No such file or directory

So it looks like I’m still missing something, although I couldn’t tell you what it is or where it should be added.

Regarding a static IP address, I think I’ll set that approach aside as it involves way more hoops  than I care to jump through. Would it really end up making any PC on my LAN visible to Kubuntu when it’s not currently visible?

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No, the bit with static IPs won’t make the shares show up in networking where they used to, and neither would creating the shortcut. These two things could be used together to get around the bit with the shares not showing, since you could just double click the shortcut and have the share appear in Dolphin (or you could add it to the left hand pane in Dolphin if you wanted).

I did not remember that there used to be one box for the application and one for the arguments in Dolphin. In that case, you would simply enter ‘dolphin SMB://192.168.x.x’ (everything between the quotes, but not the quotes themselves) into the Command box, and leave the working directory blank.

I had this trouble with Windows too, FWIW, when I still used Windows. That backup server I mentioned that I am deprecating ran Windows 7, while my desktop PC and main laptop at the time used Windows 8.1, and neither of the 8.1 PCs could see the shares. If I entered the URLs directly, they would work (which is what we have been talking about doing here too, though the syntax is different). The gist of it was that the NetBIOS ability used by the Computer Browser service to discover network shares is part of SMBv1, and MS was getting rid of it as it is not secure. I didn’t care if it was not secure, as I owned every PC on the network as well as the network itself, but MS is insistent.

There was a thread on this site years ago about this. One person whose knowledge on the topic far eclipsed mine noted that without SMB1, many PCs no longer see any network shares. The bigger question for me would have been about why those that worked fine had not also failed without SMB1.

Linux does not use Microsoft SMB code, as that is proprietary and is part of Windows, but Samba (or SaMBa) is an open source implementation that allows Linux to communicate on Windows networks. The Samba people have to react to Microsoft’s ever moving targets, and to try to balance security and convenience (as Microsoft has to do too).

The settings for Samba are stored in /etc/samba/smb.conf. Mine has been modified to get around the limitations that prohibit SMB1 because of its insecurity, since that is not an issue for my home network. This is what is contained within the section [global]:


socket options = TCP_NODELAY
security = user
null passwords = yes
workgroup = WORKGROUP
max protocol = NT1
usershare owner only = false
name resolve order = bcast lmhosts wins
guest account = nobody

It has been a long time, and I am not sure how much of this stuff even makes a difference anymore, but you can try it and see if any of it helps. Note that the max protocol option (the one that allows SMB1, which is the big one here) will seriously degrade security, so it is only to be used where that is not a concern. Since my network was open, it’s already not secure, nor is it meant to be.

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Ascaris wrote:

The gist of it was that the NetBIOS ability used by the Computer Browser service to discover network shares is part of SMBv1, and MS was getting rid of it as it is not secure. I didn’t care if it was not secure, as I owned every PC on the network as well as the network itself, but MS is insistent.

Yes, that’s my situation too: I am the only user of every computer on my LAN, and most of the machines don’t even have passwords set up for them. Why would I want to make things harder for myself? And yet, this appears to be something that Microsoft is intent on foisting upon everyone. The beauty of code is supposed to be that it’s easy to create options to accommodate everybody: if you’re the administrator of a corporate or agency network, then by all means–lock it down to the point where no one can get anything done, if that’s your preference. But as for the rest of us, stop making us conform to the peculiar needs of organizations.

Ascaris wrote:

No, the bit with static IPs won’t make the shares show up in networking where they used to, and neither would creating the shortcut. These two things could be used together to get around the bit with the shares not showing, since you could just double click the shortcut and have the share appear in Dolphin (or you could add it to the left hand pane in Dolphin if you wanted).

That’s precisely what I did on the Windows PCs that can’t browse to the Kubuntu system: I created a new desktop shortcut that takes me directly to it, and then I can browse its Public folder. And it’s what I’ve been trying to accomplish for the Kubuntu system so that I can open the Windows shared folders on it. Without success!

I do recall discussing smb.conf with you and others here some years ago when I was first trying to network the then-new Linux machine to the Windows PCs. Eventually we got it to work, but at some point later on, and probably due to some wonderful Update somewhere, this stopped working and I’ve never again been able to browse to the Windows boxes from Kubuntu. Hence the current thread. 

 

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Cybertooth wrote:

UPDATE: I installed KDE Connect on one of the PCs that I’m trying to browse to from Kubuntu. After launching it, KDE Connect did not find anything to pair, including the Kubuntu machine. And the KDE Connect on the Kubuntu machine didn’t find the Windows PC where I’d just installed that program.

Do you have a firewall installed and enabled on Linux? The default setups I have seen do block KDE Connect. I had to create rules that would allow KDE Connect (and Syncthing) before they would be able to see other computers on the network. There could be one on the Windows end too, but I know less about that. I can install KDE Connect on my Windows 11 setup on the Acer and see if I can connect to the Dell or the Xenia. I will post here when I know more about that!

As an aside: It is kinda funny having all those things mentioned all together like that, as I am typing now on the Acer sitting in my lap in my recliner, watching the text appear on my TV attached to the Xenia, via KDEConnect. I am performing a backup using my new giant 16TB hard drive, and when I was finished getting that started, I just used KDE Connect rather than move the Acer over, then move the external keyboard into the lap. I hope you can get it working, as it is just incredibly useful and convenient. I also have it on my degoogled AOSP phone, which is KDE Connect’s “main” purpose, but I hardly ever use it for that.

Also, did you try refreshing the KDE Connect list on both ends? I have to do that (more than I should) to see the other KDE Connect PCs. It is usually enough to refresh it on whatever PC I am using without having to do the other one.

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Ascaris wrote:

Also, did you try refreshing the KDE Connect list on both ends? I have to do that (more than I should) to see the other KDE Connect PCs. It is usually enough to refresh it on whatever PC I am using without having to do the other one.

Yup. I hit F5 and nothing is showing up at either end.

BTW the KDE Connect interface is minimalistic to the extreme. On the Windows client, the only clickable element is for Settings, and that doesn’t lead to anything useful. On the Kubuntu version, it doesn’t even have that: there is literally nothing to do or to click on that interface.

Ascaris wrote:

Do you have a firewall installed and enabled on Linux? The default setups I have seen do block KDE Connect. I had to create rules that would allow KDE Connect (and Syncthing) before they would be able to see other computers on the network. There could be one on the Windows end too, but I know less about that. I can install KDE Connect on my Windows 11 setup on the Acer and see if I can connect to the Dell or the Xenia. I will post here when I know more about that!

I have UWF installed and enabled on Linux. Here’s a screenshot from Settings:

However, I wouldn’t know what to do to allow KDE Connect. Firewall rules are among the most arcane and confusing things I’ve ever tried to deal with on a computer. Years ago I remember trying to understand the rules on the Norton Firewall and it was mind-numbing. “Default deny — Allow”?? So if I selected Allow, was I preventing the activity, or permitting it???

Eventually I switched to the ZoneAlarm firewall. Instead of making me manually create rules whose workings I don’t understand, whenever a new application tries to reach the Internet the program asks me if I want to let it, and then ZA creates the appropriate rule depending on my answer. Wish there were something like this for Linux.

 

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Fortunately, when I set up my firewall when I was using OpenSUSE, it had an option for KDE Connect that was so named, making it very easy to set up. I will have to go look that up and see what it is.

As for KDE Connect… the settings part does not provide access to any of the things it can do. If you want to send a file, you would use Dolphin to navigate to the file, then right click it, and in the context menu will be an option “Send to [name of computer] with KDE Connect.”

To use the remote keyboard, I click the KDE Connect icon in the system tray (lower right by the clock), then the text input field under the PC’s name and labeled “remote keyboard.” While that field is focused, all text goes to the remote PC and not actually into the box.

If I want to open a link from Firefox on one PC on another PC on the network, I right click the link in Firefox and send it from there. There are addons for Firefox and Chrome to allow it to do this.

If you temporarily suspend the firewall, does KDE Connect work then?

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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(NOTE: I lost an elaborate reply to this thread, on which I’d spent a half-hour, because at some point during the post’s creation, the AskWoody cookie that holds my credentials expired. Everything I wrote was lost when I hit Submit and I will have to try to reconstruct what I had crafted. You folks REALLY have to improve this cookie stuff.)

Ascaris wrote:

If you temporarily suspend the firewall, does KDE Connect work then?

@Ascaris, I disabled the firewall on both of the computers that have KDE Connect installed, then opened the program on each of them. Nothing happened.

Disappointed (yet again), I re-enabled the firewall on the Win7 box and was about to move to the Kubuntu box when I noticed what you said about “clicking the KDE Connect icon in the system tray”. I hadn’t paid much attention to that before, figuring that it would simply lead to the same barren UI that we had discussed. But this time, for the heck of it before giving up entirely on the project, I decided to try clicking the KDE Connect system tray icon on the Windows machine–and, lo and behold, a new and different UI appeared showing the Kubuntu computer!!!

Next I went to the Kubuntu computer and did the same thing… and the Windows PC showed up there!!!

There are some differences in the UI for KDE Connect in the respective computers. In Kubuntu, it offers to pair the Windows PC and lists a number of available plugins. On Windows, KDE Connect says simply that the Kubuntu system is not paired, with a small button to pair it.

I tried doing the pairing on each system. In Kubuntu, pairing the Windows box failed with the message “Error trying to pair: Timed out”, while the failure on Windows 7 consisted of the following dialog boxes:

So we’ve made significant progress, but we’re not quite there yet on either end.

P.S. I again disabled the firewall on the Windows system to see if that would take care of the pairing difficulties, then tried pairing each machine to the other. Now the pairing was successful in Kubuntu, but on Windows KDE Connect crashed when I tried to pair the Kubuntu machine to it. Not sure if this is something that needs to be done on both computers in order for KDE Connect connectivity to work on both of them.

P.P.S. Relaunching KDE Connect on the Windows machine (with its firewall still disabled) now showed the Kubuntu system. Apparently it’s now paired because there is an option to unpair it; however, the program reports that that box is “not reachable”.

That’s more progress (maybe), although having to disable firewalls every time before being able to use the program doesn’t sound like an ideal solution. And certainly it’s more laborious and time-consuming than simply clicking on a desktop shortcut to the other computer (the original subject of this thread!).

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
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I guess the Windows client isn’t quite there yet. Is there another version of it somewhere perhaps?

Disabling the firewall is just a diagnostic thing. If it works, then it would mean the firewall is blocking the communication, which means a rule has to be made to allow the traffic.

To make a permanent fix, there are instructions from KDE to help. You need to open the incoming port ranges from 1714 to 1764 on both TCP and UDP, on IPV4 and 6 if you use both. Here is how it looks on my setup (the 22000 one is Syncthing):

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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Cybertooth

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Thanks for the info and the link!

I created these rules in the firewalls for both computers. Unfortunately, they are still not “connecting”. While KDE Connect on each of them reports that the other one is paired, on Kubuntu it says that the other device is “unavailable”, while on Windows it says that the other device is “not reachable”.

Is there some further step needed (such as rebooting the computers) for the firewall changes to take effect?

P.S. I just realized that while the Windows PC is connected directly to a router, the Kubuntu machine is connected to a switch which is then connected to the same router. Mentioning this in case it’s relevant. Bear in mind, though, that the Linux system was able to browse the network a few years ago (under the same router/switch setup) before OS developers (Linux and/or Windows) started messing with network connectivity.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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The firewall changes should be effective right away. Did you try reloading the list of devices on one or both sides? That is something that I still need to do sometimes.

As far as I know, being connected to a switch that is connected to the router should be fine… but you could always try experimenting to find out (if the ethernet cables are long enough!)

Windows has a firewall too that is on by default. I used to buy a program that gave the whole thing a much more comprehensive GUI, as the default setup is really sparse. That was in the Win 7 days, FWIW. It was called something like “Windows firewall with advanced security.”

 

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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Cybertooth

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Ascaris wrote:

The firewall changes should be effective right away. Did you try reloading the list of devices on one or both sides?

I did try that. Refreshed on both sides and when that didn’t improve matters, I closed out KDE Connect on both computers and then relaunched it. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to make any difference.

The Windows 7 PC is using Bitdefender, and that’s where I created the UDP and TCP firewall rules. Turns out that I do have this “Windows Firewall with Advanced Security” (thinking about it, I vaguely remember installing it years ago), but FWIW at the top of its window it says that, “These settings are being managed by vendor application Bitdefender Firewall”.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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