Linux

Heh. Yes they're similar, but on the technical side different in a very important way. It has to do with opening a file from inside another program. If you select a shortcut, the program with treat or as a separate file, so most of the time the action will fail. A link, though, you should end up with the program opening the target of the link. In other words, a shortcut is a file that points at a different file, where a symlink involves she filesystem trickery to accomplish almost the same thing.

That's a horrible, just terrible explanation, though - but I'm pretty sure this is the gist of it.