Arch Linux

hwallace

Member

Registered: 2021-08-30

Posts: 110

Replacing MATE Caja with Thunar

I am using MATE  as my DE but want to use Thunar instead of Caja.

Using pacman to install thunar, thunar-volman, thunar-archive-plugin, thunar-media-tags-plugin,

I have an acceptable solution except the "open in terminal" option in the context menu raises the exception

 Failed to launch preferred application for category 'mate-terminal. Could not find fallback mate-terminal application.

The wiki at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Thunar has  this about that

4.1 Open Terminal Here

Open Terminal Here is the sole action on installation. Tell exo which terminal to use,

~/.config/xfce4/helpers.rc

TerminalEmulator=terminal

Name 	Command 	File patterns 	Appears if selection contains
Open Terminal Here 	exo-open --working-directory %f --launch TerminalEmulator 	* 	Directories 

I have set the helpers.rc as instructed

TerminaEmulator=/usr/bin/mate-terminal

but I do not understand this exo business. exo is installed but I don't understand what I'm to do here.  The helpers.rc  by itself does not enable the feature so I suppose I'm supposed to issue this exo setting somehow or somewhere I just don't get it.

Last edited by hwallace (2024-03-17 04:02:43)

toz

Member

Registered: 2011-10-28

Posts: 513

Re: Replacing MATE Caja with Thunar

If you look at the "Open Terminal Here" thunar custom action, you will see that it runs (by default) the command "exo-open --working-directory %f --launch TerminalEmulator". exo is an Xfce utility library. One of exo's functions in Xfce is to allow you to custom set any terminal, mail reader, web browser, and file manager program so that it is launched using these exo commands (allows Xfce to be more modular). There is also a utility program that you can use "xfce4-mime-settings" but it ultimately saves the information to ~/.config/xfce4/helpers.rc.

You can also directly edit the "Open Terminal Here" thunar custom action and replace the command to just start the terminal app you want.

hwallace

Member

Registered: 2021-08-30

Posts: 110

Re: Replacing MATE Caja with Thunar

Ah yes thank you. That clears things up.

Still not working so I installed xfce4-terminal and now "open in terminal" uses xfce4 as I expect. However helpers.rc is still pointing to /usr/bin/mate-terminal.

The xfce4 terminal is good enough so not a show stopper here, but do you have any idea what's going on? I have rebooted the DM and even the boot system but no change.

Thanks again.

Last edited by hwallace (2024-03-17 18:33:59)