How to open a command terminal in Linux?

In Linux, there are a number of terminal emulators which allow you to interact with various shells. Each shell is basically a command interpreter that understands Linux commands (GNU & Unix commands is more correct I suppose…). A terminal emulator provides an interface (window) for the shell and some other facilities for using the command prompt. To open a terminal window, you just have to modify your command string like this:-

import java.io.*;

class TerminalLauncher
{
    public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException
    {
        String command= "/usr/bin/xterm"; 
        Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();  
        Process pr = rt.exec(command);
    }
}

The basic assumption I have made is that you want to open xterm, which is available on almost any system (with X installed of course). You might want to open another terminal emulator like rxvt, eterm, aterm, gnome-terminal or konsole. The command string can also be modified to use different shells like zsh. I suggest you catch an exception in case the terminal you chose isn’t present and handle it by asking the user to install it. A better solution is to accept command line arguments for the users preferred shell or to use a configuration file which the user can change to make your script open the shell of his/her choice.

Note
1. As others have already pointed out, xterm (or any other terminal of your choice) may not be in the path specified (/usr/bin/…) and may not even be installed, so you might have to use some fancy command string (Ex: pipelining find through grep to get the path to xterm before launching), which isn’t such a great idea. I think the best way is to let the user configure the whole thing.

2.I got a comment on this answer (by ypnos), suggesting that I avoid using absolute paths and rather rely on the command being in the PATH environment variable. I have to say I agree. In that case, the command string should be –

String command = "xterm"

Do look at the comment, because it also points out the problem with using find.