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os.startfile can be implemented on other OS'es besides Windows relatively easily (although the operation parameter should probably be limited to Windows; it can be implemented elsewhere, but is probably not worth the trouble).
On Unix-like operating systems besides OS X, an attempt to use xdg-open can be used and will attempt to open the file in a chosen program; this is the freedesktop.org standard open utility. See also http://linux.die.net/man/1/xdg-open and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdg-open (not specific to ArchLinux).
On OS X, open can be used, with similar results to xdg-open (in fact, xdg-open seems inspired by it). See also https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/open.1.html.