Just sharing something neat I learned today about Linux…
In Windows, I used to do this a lot:
– Be at a command prompt, in some directory, e.g.: C:\my files\more files
– When I need to see that same folder in the Windows GUI, I’d type: start . (note the period, meaning “this directory”)
– The Windows file manager would open in a new window, focused on that same folder as the path.
I realized today I didn’t know how to do that in Linux (I’m on Ubuntu) so I searched around and found the xdg-open
command.
The man page for xdg-open
says:
xdg-open opens a file or URL in the user’s preferred application. If a URL is provided the URL will be opened in the user’s preferred web browser.
At any terminal prompt, I type something like:
xdg-open .
or
xdg-open ~/Documents
And boom! A new KDE Dolphin files window appears, focused on that path.
or this works too, but with a browser:
xdg-open http://eff.org
Rock and/or roll!
I’d create an alias:
alias open=xdg-open
It’s easier to type in that way
I totally did, yes:
alias xo='xdg-open $1 &>/dev/null'
… since it always has some odd output when I run it here on my pc.
That’s actually a great idea, thanks for the suggestion
Some systems already have this implemented. For example, on my machine
open
is/usr/bin/open
which links to/etc/alternatives/open
which in turn currently points at/usr/bin/xdg-open
.I’ve seen this on a few Linux distros. MacOS also has something similar, not based on XDG but it works really well. It also uses the
open
command.