The Linux MATE desktop environment still does not have icons in the file picker after all of this time. There is a patch to implement this in the GTK file picker, but this is a long way away from actual implementation. It is easier to get a patch implemented in the Linux kernel than it is to get one into the GKT 4 codebase. Why is this though? it is a small thing, but Windows has had this feature for a very long time. Even in Windows XP, you could choose to view either a list view or icons in the file chooser. But you can not do this in MATE or Gnome? Even though it has a nice icons view in the main Caja file manager, GTK just can not implement such a useful feature.
![The current GTK 4 file picker in MATE.](https://www.securitronlinux.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/caja.webp)
The Windows XP SP3 file picker is very good, it has a filmstrip mode for viewing photos. And this was in 2001.
![The Windows XP file picker in action. Why can GTK not have something like this?](https://www.securitronlinux.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/xp.webp)
Below is the patch for GTK to add icons to the file picker, this shows that it would not be hard to implement in the GTK code.