Why does Caja file manager can't be executed from terminal?

Question

I can launch nautilus from terminal.

wolf@ubuntu:~$ nautilus
wolf@ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep -i nautilus
wolf      2560  0.1  0.3 1302072 60088 tty1    Sl+  19:21   0:01 nautilus-desktop
wolf      2575  0.4  0.3 1423380 59756 tty1    Sl+  19:21   0:03 nautilus
wolf      5221  0.0  0.0  14428  1052 pts/0    S+   19:32   0:00 grep --color=auto -i nautilus
wolf@ubuntu:~$ 

But, why does Caja file manager can't be executed from terminal?

What is the right command to execute it?

wolf@ubuntu:~$ caja
wolf@ubuntu:~$
wolf@ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep -i caja
wolf      4824  0.0  0.0  14428  1032 pts/0    S+   19:29   0:00 grep --color=auto -i caja
wolf@ubuntu:~$ 
wolf@ubuntu:~$ which caja
/usr/bin/caja
wolf@ubuntu:~$ /usr/bin/caja
wolf@ubuntu:~$ 
wolf@ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep -i caja
wolf      4852  0.0  0.0  14428  1036 pts/0    S+   19:29   0:00 grep --color=auto -i caja
wolf@ubuntu:~$ 

Update

wolf@linux:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Release:    18.04
Codename:   bionic
wolf@linux:~$
wolf@linux:~$ ps -e | egrep 'Xorg|Wayland'
 1797 tty1     00:07:15 Xorg
wolf@linux:~$ 

Answer 1

At first I can reproduce the issue on clean Ubuntu 18.04 LTS VM.

I'm very dissappointed by the fact that I can't run Caja by any command like:

caja --browser
caja --no-desktop
caja --force-desktop

and what is interesting is that caja --check does not show any errors, also the ~/.xsession-errors file is empty.

I have remembered that bug was reported previously as https://pad.lv/1846612 .

I do not have time to debug this unpredictable GNOME Shell behaviour.

So I would recommend to ignore GNOME Shell (or even remove) and install Ubuntu MATE instead as simple as:

sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-desktop^

Or start Caja with something like

caja --no-desktop ~