How to open text, video, or picture files via terminal

Question

I am new to ubuntu and I would like to know how to open a simple text file or open a video or a picture via the terminal

Answer 1

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:someone@somewhere.com

should open your default mail program's composer, with someone@somewhere.com 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.

Answer 2

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 it 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).

(This is a half-answer)

Answer 3

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"