Comment 3 for bug 1115886

Thanks for the bug reports, it's not a bug though, it's a side effect of the change in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-settings/12.10.7

We optimized for the default installation, nautilus is rendering the background on Ubuntu so we don't need to activate the g-s-d plugin to do that (even if it does check what nautilus is doing and skip the rendering it's still code loaded in memory and some cycles wasted for 99% of users who will never change that settings)

The rational was also that users who are technical enough to go tweak their "show icons on the desktop" gsettings key can also tweak the g-s-d one to re-enable the background rendering.

Sorry that it did bite you though, you seem to be in a that small group of people who do tweak their config to not use nautilus...