I've put this into a bash function to render markdown files in the terminal window function markdown() { pandoc -s -f markdown -t html "${1}" | sed '

I've put this into a bash function to render markdown files in the terminal window function markdown() { pandoc -s -f markdown -t html "${1}" | sed 's/^<pre class/<p><\/p><pre class/' | lynx -stdin } ... which doesn't really address your main complaint, but can help in cases where you really don't want to exit your command-line. Requires the pandoc package, which isn't installed by default in Ubuntu.