I like to use a command line interface whenever possible. Sometimes though a windowed application is required. In MS Windows you use the start command to bring up the default app, (don’t use this much). In Cygwin I use the cygstartcommand.

So I was using my Ubuntu system and wanted to do something similar. The command it turns out is gnome-open. Bit of a mouthful so I have this aliased in my .bashrc file to cs for either cygstart or gnome-open which is much more snappy.