Yes, update to Xfce 4.10 and the preferred file manager will also be used by xfdesktop.

Great. I just tried that and now all the Xubuntu themes \ icons etc have been trashed \ don't work, and everything looks horrible.

Greybird is still selected as a theme but it doesn't actually show, the icons for a lot of things have gone, and the menu is filled with rubbish.

EDIT: Reverted to 4.8 and all back to normal. Not sure why 4.10 did that, maybe I'll just wait for Xubuntu 12.10

In preferred applications there should be an option for 'Other' and you will need to locate the application you want. I'm using 4.10 in Kororaa (Fedora) so you may see something different to me.

Thanks, you are right, there is an "other" option which lets you browse.

I have selected the Caja executable and it is now it seems to be the default file manager - but not for anything on or opened from the desktop.

Opening a folder on the desktop etc launches Thunar, and it's not possible to get multiple file properties on the desktop either (clearly Thunar is still involved)

Is it possible to replace Thunar for handling the desktop also?

Now that I have jumped ship I am quite happy, but not completely. There are a couple of things that bug me, and they are all to do with Thunar.

I'm running the latest Xubuntu (12.04) which includes XFCE 4.8 and Thunar is v1.2.3

The problems I have are thus:

1) Thunar won't let me select multiple files\folders at once and show properties. This I find is the biggest issue. Every other file manager I've used can do this, and it makes no sense as to why Thunar can't.

If there is a way to enable\get this functionality, please let me know!

The other problems are less serious but would be nice if they could be changed:

2) It's hard to tell in Thunar when a volume is mounted or not. The only difference is that the icon becomes slightly darker, which is often not very obvious at all. I much prefer the way PCManFM and Nautilus do it, by showing \ hiding the eject button.

Is it possible to change this in Thunar??

3) Thunar doesn't let you switch easily between breadcrumb (pathbar) and toolbar style navigation - also, when pathbar is selected, you lose the toolbar buttons completely.

This is the least annoying as I can leave it on toolbar style but pathbar is sometimes useful, so having both or being able to easily switch would be nice.

I expect that none of these features (except perhaps the multiple file properties issue) will be implemented any time soon, however, there is a solution I have found - and that is to use the old Nautilus from Gnome2 (Now called Caja from MATE-Desktop)

Caja (Nautilus) solves all these three issues I have with Thunar but creates another problem:

How to set Caja as the default file manager and totally replace Thunar?

Caja does not even show up in the "Preferred Applications" settings.

I hope someone can give advice! Thanks