Did you know that you can open application from terminal in Linux Ubuntu Systems. This tutorial explains how to run an application from command line and run a program in Linux shell.
Find Commands To Run Applications In Ubuntu Linux
Once you know where are programs installed in Linux Ubuntu, you can then run an application from command line. To find path of installed software in Ubuntu, navigate to /usr/share folder.
Method 1
In Ubuntu Linux Systems, most default applications will have a .desktop file located in /usr/share/applications folder. You can find the corresponding terminal command {of a specific application} that will be used to open/run to launch the said application.
1. Navigae to /usr/share/applications
2. Right click on the application’s icon
3. Select Properties in the menu option
4. See the command tab and you see the command that will run the application
Method 2
In Ubuntu Linux, some programs or applications simply run by a binary. By using whereis command you can find out where binary is located for a specific application.
whereis application-nameUsage example:
sourcedigit@SD:~$ whereis audacity
audacity: /usr/bin/audacity /usr/share/audacity /usr/share/man/man1/audacity.1.gz
You can simply run /usr/bin/audacity to open the application.
sourcedigit@SD:~$ /usr/bin/audacity
whereis command
whereis command is used to locate the binary, source, and manual page files for a command. whereis locates the binary, source and manual files for the specified command names.
The whereis command attempts to locate the desired program in the standard Linux places, and in the places specified by $PATH and $MANPATH.
Syntax of the whereis command is:
whereis [options] [-BMS directory... -f] filename
The search restrictions (options -b, -m and -s) are cumulative and apply to the subsequent name patterns on the command line. Any new search restriction resets the search mask.
For example:
whereis -bm ls tr -m gcc
The above command searches for “ls” and “tr” binaries and man pages, and for “gcc” man pages only.