Modding the nautilus desktop - Text Beside Icons

gistfile1.txt

First, open terminal and write:

apt-get source nautilus
sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus

the build-dep command will install all the build dependencies for nautilus.

1) Create a new text file and call it: file-manager.patch
copy all this contents into this file:

--- nautilus-desktop-icon-view.c	2011-10-27 17:31:16.773039361 +0200
+++ ../../nautilus-3.2.1-original/src/nautilus-desktop-icon-view.c	2011-10-28 09:40:25.000000000 +0200
@@ -852,7 +852,7 @@
 			     "supports-auto-layout", FALSE,
 			     "supports-scaling", TRUE,
 			     "supports-keep-aligned", TRUE,
-			     "supports-labels-beside-icons", FALSE,
+			     "supports-labels-beside-icons", TRUE,
 			     NULL);
 	return NAUTILUS_VIEW (view);
 }




Save the patch.

2) Copy the patch into the folder ~/nautilus-(version)/src/
open terminal go to ~/nautilus-(version)/src/ that where you put the patch and when you in there,
write:

patch -p0 < file-manger.patch

if the command was successful you should see something like this:

patching file nautilus-desktop-icon-view.c

3) not start to compile nautilus
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
killall nautilus
Alt+F2
nautilus

that's it, now the option text beside icons should work on the desktop too, enjoy :) The text is 
stolen from [1] but I updated the patch. I tested the patch with Ubuntu 11.10 and nautilus-3.2.1.

[1] http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=f3f29fcec

Thanks for the quick response. Here's what I am seeing:

In ~/nautilus-3.4.1/src/nautilus-desktop-icon-view.c, I can see the following (note: line numbers are different in 3.4.1 than in the 3.2.1):

781 nautilus_desktop_icon_view_create (NautilusWindowSlot *slot)
782 {
783         NautilusIconView *view;
784
785         view = g_object_new (NAUTILUS_TYPE_DESKTOP_ICON_VIEW,
786                              "window-slot", slot,
787                              "supports-zooming", FALSE,
788                              "supports-auto-layout", FALSE,
789                              "supports-scaling", TRUE,
790                              "supports-keep-aligned", TRUE,
791                              "supports-labels-beside-icons", TRUE,
792                              NULL);
793         return NAUTILUS_VIEW (view); 

I followed the above instructions:
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
killall nautilus
Alt+F2
nautilus

no errors on any of the above, but when I restart Nautilus, the text is still below the icons. I noticed you referenced 3.4.2 - maybe I need to bump up to the minor revision (.2) from .1.

Thanks!

Patch is smart enough to modify the file even if the line numbers are different. At first it scans for the specific line number. If patch finds the line which it expects that everything is fine. If not then it tries to search for the line above and below. This looks like this:

$  patch -p0 < ../../patch.txt
patching file nautilus-desktop-icon-view.c
Reversed (or previously applied) patch detected!  Assume -R? [n]

Here you can answer 'y' and patch will modifiy nautilus-desktop-icon-view.c nevertheless. This works fine for me.

Thanks for updating my little patch. I was unaware they've changed it for Nautilus 3.x till about an hour ago when I've browsed through the files again.
The patch is great but not entirely necessary, it's just a matter of changing one line from FALSE to TRUE.
I think they are planning to remove "Labels beside icons" for icon view in Nautilus 3.5.4, that's a shame. Lucky it's still open source.

I re-wrote this little tutorial from my old Pastebin and posted it into my deviantart Journal. With some additional info:
http://oi3prnnx.deviantart.com/#/d58nu5u

If you've got anything to add, please do.

Duh! I have discovered my issue. For anyone who may be experiencing the same problem, I forgot to go to Edit -> Preferences -> Views and actually click the "Text Beside Icons" check box. Stupid mistake! This is actually working for me under Ubuntu 12.10. Sorry for the silly runaround!