Opening Firefox from terminal

The terminal locks when you are running an application from it as long as the application is running. With the ampersand (&) you can start the application in the background and still use the terminal. Type:

user@host:~# firefox &

To start firefox in the background. Output of the application will still be in the terminal.

Or, if firefox is already running you can do this:

  1. Ctrl+z to put firefox into the backgroound.
  2. Type:

    jobs
    

    You should see your jobs like :

    [1]+  Stopped  firefox.
    
  3. Type:

    bg %1 
    

    (or number of your job)


Use nohup firefox & to run firefox from terminal and you can use terminal for other process, if you close terminal, firefox will not quit.

If you get error like Another instance is running then use nohup firefox -P --no-remote & and create a new user profile and browse.


You can use the & symbol after your command to run it in background.