I am new to Ubuntu and I would like to know how to open a simple text file or a video file or an image file via the terminal.
8 Answers
If you wish to open files in graphical applications from the command line, such as within gnome-terminal
or xterm
then simply run:
xdg-open $file
And it will open $file
in an appropriate application for that file. The argument can also be a URL, so
xdg-open http://askubuntu.com/
will open this site in your browser, and:
xdg-open mailto:[email protected]
should open your default mail program's composer, with [email protected]
in the To:
field.
If what you want to view videos on a virtual terminal, without Xorg, you can use mplayer
with the directfb
, fbdev
, fbdev2
, sdl
(with the frame buffer back-end), or svga
as the video output, by running
mplayer -vo fbdev2 file.mpg
For example. For still images, you can install the fbi
package, and use it to display images on a framebuffer.
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I forgot about xdg-open. xD But they were not specific about whether they have only the terminal, or whether they have the GUI, so I assumed worst-case in that they only have a terminal and no GUI...– Thomas Ward ♦Nov 30, 2013 at 0:58
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To open a video from terminal
First install vlc player by running the below commands on terminal
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install vlc
Then go into the directory which contains videos you want to play,
cd /path/to/the/directory/which/contains/videos
Play the video from terminal using vlc player,
vlc "videofilename.fileformat"
To open a picture from terminal,
Install shotwell to open a picture via terminal,
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install shotwell
Then go into the directory which contain picture you want to open,
cd /path/to/the/directory/which/contains/picture
Open the picture via terminal using shotwell,
shotwell "picturefilename.fileformat"
To open a text file, you can use:
nano /path/to/file
where /path/to/file
is the location on the computer your file is stored, with the actual name of the file at the end.
So, if you downloaded your file into your Downloads
directory and your username is example
, and the file is named test.txt
, then you can do:
nano /home/example/Downloads/text.txt
You can use Eye Of Gnome too to open image files:
eog filename.png
If not installed already, you can install it using:
sudo apt-get install eog
To open any file via terminal, you have to locate the path of that file. Then type the name of the application which you want to open the file with.
For example, to open an image file in the current directory using Shotwell, you would run:
shotwell image.jpg
or (using the absolute path of the file):
shotwell /home/username/Downloads/image.jpg
Use cat
to read the contents of text files:
cat $file
cat
usage (Unix-like operating system command)
Stands for: Concat
enate
Function: Concatenate files and print on the standard output
Syntax: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]
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2While
cat
will display text files in human readable form but it can't open pictures and videos since the data inside that isn't stored in form of a regular text file.– KulfyMar 20, 2020 at 18:36
I just downloaded a song (Mario theme song (fast)) and ran the following to play it:
play main_theme_sped_up.ogg
And it worked!
As an addition to @dobey's good answer, if you prefer opening an image with the system's image viewer via terminal, use xdg-open
as the answer suggests. Another common alternative for images is feh
, which can be installed by running:
sudo apt install feh
and then, for example:
feh icon-us.jpg