Is there a way to configure the Caja open-in-terminal extension to open the user's preferred terminal rather than mate-terminal?

Thanks.

Not specifically for CAJA, but it honors the general setting that you can change:

• from the menu: System => Preferences =>Personal => Preferred Applications => System => Terminal Emulator.
• from the Control Center: (either type mate-control-center or from the menu: System =>Control Center) in the Personal group.

I had already tried that. No luck.

I'm using Xfce in a Current VM. I installed the MATE 1.22 packages. I verified xfce4-terminal is the preferred terminal. When I launch Caja and select Open in terminal, mate-terminal opens.

I don't know if this is hard-coded.

Background:
Dues to recent changes in MATE, I am looking at migrating to Xfce.

I don't like Thunar because the file manager does not support expanding or collapsing directories in the file pane. Caja supports this. The Thunar side pane supports expanding and collapsing, but I prefer to do this in the file pane. Memory muscle and all that going way back to the KDE 3 Konqueror days. As a side note, I always get frustrated when I have to use the Windows File Explorer at work because that file manager also does not support direct expanding and collapsing of directories.

I started looking at other file managers. So far xfe is wickedly fast but does not support direct expanding and collapsing. I suppose I need to look at others. Would be so simple if Caja just honored by preferred selections.

I am puzzled: why does it work in Mate 1.18, then?

I tried changing to xfce4-terminal, xterm, uxterm, konsole, LXTerminal, all worked.

It didn't work with Mlterm, but that my mistake: I updated brltty to version 6 and didn't remember to rebuilt Mlterm aginst it. Will do.

Interesting. I don't have any system running MATE 1.18, but the user's terminal preference in MATE 1.16 is honored too.

I just updated my Current VM to MATE 1.22 and forgot to create a snapshot. I could restore from a backup to test 1.20, but instead I wanted to see if the problem was Slackware only. In a Xubuntu 18.04 VM (Xfce desktop) I added the Caja packages. I verified preferences were set to xfce4-terminal, as would be expected in Xubuntu. Same breakage. As an additional test I removed the mate-terminal package. Selecting the menu option results in no terminal opening at all. Nothing in the xsession-error log.

Looks like the regression was introduced in 1.20 and is a MATE bug rather than Slackware.

I'm running MATE 1.22 and have no problems setting the default terminal using System => Preferences =>Personal => Preferred Applications => System => Terminal Emulator.
Could it be a VM issue, since you say that you're running -current VM?

The problem is not setting the preferred app. The problem is Caja does not honor that preference.

Have you checked for a bug report on that? If there is one, there may be a way to tick a box saying it also affects you. Without such a tick box, you'll have to contribute some information towards defining or solving the problem in the form of a comment, but remember that "me too" comments don't help and will not advance a solution. If there is no bug report, and you can meet the requirements for filing one, then please do. It may seem a bit inconvenient on the surface but it helps improve the software and is really just the cost of doing business when you use Free and Open Source Software.

Sorry, I omitted the obvious: when I choose another terminal as ppreferred (e.g xfce4), caja does honor my choice. Which is why I wondered if the fact thar you're running -current on VM could have anything to do with it.