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I can very much live with the default of Tree View and not showing hidden files. I find Icon View disorienting. All of the icons look the same to me. Pictures might be worth a thousand words, but in a file manager I'd rather have a thousand words. Maybe that is only because of the way I started using computers so long ago.
I do understand your reasoning, however I'm not comfortable making that large of a change at this point. If you want to enable it as the default for Slackware that's fine with me--the file you will want to modify is profile_filemanagement.desktop; change "View2_ServiceName=konq_iconview" to "View2_ServiceName=konq_listview"
I don't think changing the default icon set will change any user's expectations of how the desktop should work. Most computer users today understand the desktop icon metaphor. But the icon style/theme can easily change the user's impression. As the old adage goes, only one chance to make a first impression. I don't think the old classic icon set makes a good impression.
Neither do I. Right now Crystal should be used (at least it shows up that way on my test system)--does a new user still use the old Classic theme on your system?
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I think the shadows with icon text is hard to see for many people. I know the older I get the more I dislike such bling. I wear reading glasses or the text in a book is blurry to me. Not so 10 years ago. :) When I see gimmicks like shadowed text on the computer desktop I struggle to read the content. I suspect many people with poor vision do too. My greatest pet peeve with Web 2.0 is that web devs all use humongous TVs for monitors and they design the text for that size picture, which means the text is too small to read on most desktop monitors. I treat gimmicks like shadowed text the same way. Developers impress me the most when I remain productive, not when they try to show off their programming skills. :)
OK, I'm convinced. White text with no shadows it is.
Tim