Command Line – Using xdg-open to Open a URL in a New Process

command linefile opening

I'm starting to experiment with Crunchbang (which is based on Debian, and uses terminator) as a web development environment, and one of the things I am struggling with is the behaviour of xdg-open. I come from an OSX background, so forgive me if this question comes off as dense.

I would like to be able to open a url with xdg-open http://www.google.com and then continue to use the same terminal window to work (it's how open functions in OSX). Right now, using xdg-open occupies the current tab/session until I close browser window, or manually end things with ctrl + c. I'd much prefer it start a new process, that way I can open up a URL, refer to data on the page, and use it in the same tab/window without needing to open an additional one.

Best Answer

Strange, it works like that out of the box on my Debian. Try running it in the background:

xdg-open http://www.google.com &

You can make this into a function by adding these lines to your ~/.bashrc file: 

function open () {
    xdg-open "$*" &
}

You can then simply run open http://www.google.com and it will run in the background.

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