Persistence of user configuration in 2.2.0

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>]

I've taken a quick look through the list archive and didn't see
this issue addressed; sorry if it's there and I missed it.  But
after updating from gnome 2.1 to 2.2 I'm seeing (besides the
various enhancements, for which many thanks) a certain amount of
breakage.  Just wanted to make sure this was registered before
the next round of updates.

1. I don't use a graphical file manager, and don't choose to
have nautilus running as part of my gnome session.  On the other
hand, I do like for gnome to manage my desktop background, in
the sense of providing a nice color gradient.  This was cool in
gnome 2.1, but doesn't work in 2.2.  I can set the background,
but if I'm not running nautilus then when I restart gnome my
desktop background setting is not activated: I get the default
X basketweave.  I have verified that my color setting is
correctly registered in gconf; it's just not being activated on
starting a gnome session unless I'm willing to run nautilus.
This doesn't make sense -- there's no indication in
gnome-background-properties that what you're setting there is
somehow nautilus-dependent.

2. Independent of nautilus, when I set the background color for
gnome panels, this is not re-established when I exit gnome and
restart.  The panels for which I have specified a background
color (again, I verified that the gconf entries are correct on
exit) come up black when I restart gnome.

There's a third issue that is nautilus-specific.  When I was
trying to understand issue 1 above I experimented by running
nautilus, and in the process I customized the nautilus desktop
icons (moved the Home and Trash icons and renamed Home).  Once
I had finished experimenting I removed nautilus from my gnome
session, but I retained a panel launcher for
"nautilus --no-desktop" (for occasional use of nautilus).  I
now find that after customizing the icons, nautilus no longer
respects the "--no-desktop" option: when I activate this
launcher the desktop icons appear, and four nautilus threads
persist when I close the nautilus window opened with the
--no-desktop flag.  The only way to get rid of these is to
(again) Remove nautilus in the session properties dialog.

--
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University, NC