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

I think a combination of xdg-open as described by shellholic and - if it fails - the solution to finding a browser using the which command as described here is probably the best solution.

Answer 2

In Java (version 6+), you can also do:

Desktop d = Desktop.getDesktop();
d.browse(uri);

Though this won't work on all Linuxes. At the time of writing, Gnome is supported, KDE isn't.

Answer 3

At least on Debian and all its derivatives, there is a 'sensible-browser' shell script which choose the browser best suited for the given url.

http://man.he.net/man1/sensible-browser