Starting A Program From Command Line to X

A cool little trick when your logged in at the terminal level with an X windows session running e.g Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc and want the program to start in X.

I would use it to play tricks or open a URL for someone to look at.

To direct a GUI program to start in X start the command with “DISPLAY=:0” and append the command you want to run afterwards. For example to open a web site using Firefox to my site the command would look like this:
DISPLAY=:0 firefox "www.dannytsang.co.uk"

Start a GUI Application as Current User over SSH

About Danny

I.T software professional always studying and applying the knowledge gained and one way of doing this is to blog. Danny also has participates in a part time project called Energy@Home [http://code.google.com/p/energyathome/] for monitoring energy usage on a premise. Dedicated to I.T since studying pure Information Technology since the age of 16, Danny Tsang working in the field that he has aimed for since leaving school. View all posts by Danny → This entry was posted in Linux and tagged Firefox, Gnome, gui application, gui program, ssh, windows session, x windows. Bookmark the permalink.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.