Comment 3 for bug 484420

Is a bug in Ubuntu 9.10. For a misterious reason, it removed the icons from the buttons. To recover them, just open a terminal, type "gconf-editor" (without quotes) and, when it appears, activate the entry Desktop->Gnome->Interface->buttons_have_icons . This will make return all the icons in all the pygtk apps.

And if you want the icons in the System menu to return, just activate the entry Desktop->Gnome->Interface->menus_have_icons , which is disabled by default too.