[Wylug-discuss] Gnome 2.6. Mime Type Icon Woes

[Dave Fisher]

Hi,

Being a Debian user, I've only just 'upgraded' to Gnome 2.6. ... Oh, my
God!

The so-called 'spatial browsing' model is even more annoying and
anti-productive than the users of trendier distros had led me to
believe.

... what sort of crack are these gnome folks smoking?

OK, rant over ...

My problem is that the 'upgrade' seems to have 'lost' most of the
previously working associations between file types and the icons that
represent them in the file manager and on the desktop.

Almost all file types (including devices, directories, etc. are
represented by a default 'dog-eared page' icon.  With the result that my
shell now gives me far more visual browsing clues than the bloody GUI
file manager!

As far as I can see, gnome's associations between mime types and
applications is still in working order (e.g. if I click on an MS MPEG-4
file, xine still runs).

Window controls are also themed correctly (so Gnome can clearly use my
installed gnome themes), but icons are definitely not themed properly.

The Gnome documentation seems to assume that you only need to know how
to install and customise themes, because once they are installed they
'just work' (ho, ho! ... how long have these folks been using Linux?).

So, can anyone tell me where gnome hides the configuration to associate
file types with icons?

By their silence on this matter, the gnome documentation and interfaces
seem to suggest that this association is a property of the theme.

Is this the case?

If so, why are none of my installed themes able to do it properly?

Could it be that the specs for themes have changed and that Debian
simply hasn't packaged any of the new theme formats yet?

All positive suggestions appreciated.

Dave

P.S. For similarly laggard 'upgraders', here's the command to disable
spaced out browsing:

  $ gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser true