Hi!

How to run GUI commands in console without locking it?

For example, I just installed Skype in CentOS, and to run it, I type "skype" in the console, but then the prompt doesn't returns until I quit the application (either with control+c or quit in the app itself).

Thanks.

Hello rapahelmsx,
I am afraid that you are right. When you type "skype" in the console, the prompt does not return until you quit the application. However you can open another console in several ways:
1. from the console you typed "skype" you go to the menu and open a new console terminal, "new tab"
2. form the GUI menu you can open a new terminal console
3. using [CTRL]+[ALT]+[F1-7]
Hopefully, this can help
P.S: the reason why this console is blocked while you are skype-ing is that this is the bridge between the application and your computer it works as the GUI application, it will be close when you clik the X at the window.

Add an ampersand ( '&' ) after the command:

The shell will execute the program in the background. If you want to bring it back to foreground, type "fg". If you want to send to background a program that is already in the foreground, you first stop it with "ctrl+z" and type "bg".

This is all documented in the bash manual (man bash), press "/" and search "JOB CONTROL".

Note that you will still get messages from that program in the console, if you don't want that you could close its standard output and standard error:

Here, ">&-" closes standard output and "2>&-" closes standard error. I think there's a way to close both descriptors with one redirection but I don't know the syntax.

Similarly, this is documented in the bash manual in the section "REDIRECTION".

Another recommendation is to prepend nohup to the command, so that you can close the X terminal without closing Skype as well (I believe closing an X terminal is treated as a logout, and sends SIGHUP to all "connected" processes ).