So I know if I type gnome-terminal or xterm, a new window will be popped out. Then I checked the man page for these two, nothing relevant found.

Then I noticed under Mac you can do it with the program open. But it seems under Linux it's not that trivial.

Does anyone have experience?

2

4 Answers

Update: The new recommended syntax is:

gnome-terminal -- bash -c "<my command or script>; exec bash"

• If you want to reach the users home directory within the above command use the environment variable $HOME: bash -c "cd $HOME/; ..."

If you look at man gnome-terminal (and gnome-terminal --help) the options -x and -e are available (and it is not explicitly written they are deprecated) but all examples there are given by the syntax provided above.

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I would prefer to use the option -x that provides more reliable work than -e:

gnome-terminal -x bash -c "<my command or script>; exec bash"

• The option -x means --execute - the remainder of the command line inside the terminal.

• And our command is bash -c "<commands>". That means we execute a new bash shell, which should run some -c "<commands>".

• We have two separated (by semicolon ; == new line) <commands>.

• The first command <my command or script> will execute that we want.

• The second command exec bash has a meaning - remain open the current gnome-terminal window. There are another possible approaches to do that. In the current case the command exec will replace the current process image with a new process image - in other words it will 'kill' the current process and will execute a new (bash) under the current PID.

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More examples of usage of this format:

• Open a new terminal and source scripts
• Launch gnome-terminal from SSH session to Desktop session
• Start Specific Terminal on Startup
• Crontab and C program that should be executed into a terminal window
• Xdotool does not minimize terminal window when using in Startup Application when pc boots?

7

gnome-terminal -e cmd will open a terminal window and run cmd within it.

5

You can simply do CTRLALTT and you will open a new terminal.

Try gnome-terminal -e "bash -c command;bash"

Another approach that will keep the window open is to use xterm:

xterm -hold -e cmd

The hold option keeps the window open.

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