Open an URL in the default browser

guasqui · 03-21-2006, 08:04 AM

Hi all,

I need to open an URL in the default browser by using a shell command. In a Windows batch file I am using the following command:

Code:

rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler <some-url>

Is there any similar Linux command or an analogous way of achieving the same goal?
Thanks,

Pierluigi

acid_kewpie · 03-21-2006, 01:33 PM

well there is nothing in "linux" to do this, as at the base OS level there is no concept of this. you would do this via a desktop environment manager toolkit, i.e. gnome or kde's bindings, as that's where those sorts of preferences would be defined.

taylor_venable · 03-22-2006, 11:54 AM

Eric Raymond had an idea to solve this problem, http://www.catb.org/~esr/BROWSER/index.html, too bad it doesn't seem to have taken off. Most applications that need to open something in a browser window have a config option; for a little shell script that might be overkill, though. Instead, you could parse the output of the whereis command to find out, for example.

Code:

whereis firefox | awk '{ print $1; }'

Then you could just do this for different browsers until you find one that works.