So I just down-rev'd ubuntu from 13.04 back to 12.04 LTS desktop 64 (Precise). I am using Unity. I just reformatted the Ubuntu partition, but kept my home directory intact, and everything seemed to reconnect just fine. No data was lost. However, I found that I cannot seem to change my preferences. So I cannot seem to change my desktop background, no matter how many ways I try--Ubuntu Tweak, Gnome Tweak, system settings. I also cannot change the system GTK+ theme, though apparently I am able to change the windows border theme. Further, I cannot seem to change my Nautilus preferences--so I cannot seem the make the default view a list view, and I cannot make the "single-click" behavior the default. I even went into the nautilus org.gnome.nautilus settings to manually change things, but no luck.

I thought it was a permissions issue, so I did a chown on the home folder and on the .gvfs folder. Still no luck. So somewhere there seems to be a permission that I am not catching. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.