Change environment variable (TERM)

The way I do it is using a custom_command in ~/.config/terminator/config as follows:

...
[profiles]
  [[default]]
    ...
    custom_command = TERM=xterm-256color bash -l # Do not use 'terminator' here
    use_custom_command = True
    ...

This works like a charm i.e. for the 256-color skins for midnight commander. The -l option makes bash run as a login shell (which means that it will load settings from your .bash_profile). You can omit it if you prefer Terminator to launch bash as a non-login shell (so that it will load .bashrc instead).

There's an option called xterm in Terminator's configuration (see man terminator_config), which is supposed to set TERM. Due to a bug, it does not work, and TERM is always set to xterm. Terminator also sets a COLORTERM variable, to gnome-terminal, so you can use that to set TERM to xterm-256color (since gnome-terminal has no problem with that value:

[[ $COLORTERM = gnome-terminal ]] && TERM=xterm-256color

Or, what I use to avoid problems with screen/tmux:

[[ $COLORTERM = gnome-terminal && ! $TERM = screen-256color ]] && TERM=xterm-256color

This is an untested idea:

• Copy /usr/share/applications/terminator.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications
• Edit the local .desktop copy so it sets TERM when starting terminator