Linux: command to open URL in default browser

Question

What command we have to execute (from Java, but that should not matter) on Linux (different common distributions) to open a given URL in the default browser?

Answer 1

On distributions that come with the open command,

$ open http://www.google.com

Answer 2

I think using xdg-open http://example.com is probably the best choice.

In case they don't have it installed I suppose they might have just kde-open or gnome-open (both of which take a single file/url) or some other workaround such as looping over common browser executable names until you find one which can be executed(using which). If you want a full list of workarounds/fallbacks I suggest reading xdg-open(it's a shell script which calls out to kde-open/gnome-open/etc. or some other fallback).

But since xdg-open and xdg-mime(used for one of the fallbacks,) are shell scripts I'd recommend including them in your application and if calling which xdg-open fails add them to temporary PATH variable in your subprograms environment and call out to them. If xdg-open fails, I'd recommend throwing an Exception with an error message from what it output on stderr and catching the exception and printing/displaying the error message.

I would ignore the java awt Desktop solution as the bug seems to indicate they don't plan on supporting non-gnome desktops anytime soon.

Answer 3

The most cross-distribution one is xdg-open http://stackoverflow.com

Answer 4

I believe the simplest method would be to use Python:

python -m webbrowser "http://www.example.com/"

Answer 5

sensible-browser [options] [URL or filename]; # Said to be the best.
# Server translates to: 
echo $BROWSER;
w3m [options] [URL or filename]
# Desktop (X11): I use/prefer,
x-www-browser http://tv.jimmylandstudios.com

Answer 6

on ubuntu you can try gnome-open.

$ gnome-open http://www.google.com