Starting GUI program from Linux terminal prevents further usage

Everyone saying to use "&" is right. If you happen to forget, type ^Z (ctrl+Z) to suspend the program, then "bg" to tell the shell to run it in the background. That leaves the shell fully interactive just as if you had started the program with the "&".

"You need to start the application in the background like this:

# xeyes &

The & indicates that the application should launch in the background."

"You likely want to redirect any output from the command to /dev/null, as well as background it. IIRC:

command > /dev/null 2>&1 &

When I was using a Sharp Zaurus PDA running Linux (and, IIRC, I was using the OpenBox window manager), I had a bash file I called q, for ""Queue it up, quickly and quietly"". You could then run, say:

q mycommand param1 param2

I believe this is how the script worked:

#!/bin/bash

$@ > /dev/null 2>&1 &"