I just tried to change the background on the fresh rawhide install, and although the desktop-backgrounds-* packages are installed, gnome-background-properties doesn't offer any backgrounds. I think we should a) add xml files for at least some of the backgrounds to /usr/share/gnome-destop-properties b) make sure the file chooser has a bookmark for /usr/share/backgrounds I'm currently trying to find out a bit more about the xml format for a)...
Ok, so adding all the images in the desktop-background-* packages makes the dialog incredibly slow to startup, so we clearly have to pick a handful (10 - 20) good backgrounds from the packages and remove the rest from the xml files I'm attaching shortly.
Created attachment 104206 [details] all backgrounds in desktop-backgrounds-basic
Created attachment 104207 [details] all backgrounds in desktop-backgrounds-extra
Additionally, we should add a preview to the file chooser, and make sure it starts up in /usr/share/backgrounds.
I've asked Diana to come up with a short list of images to show initially.
I have a patch ready to add a simple preview to the file chooser.
And, for reference, the upstream bugs related to these issues are http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=139714 and http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145069
Added the preview to the file chooser now, in control-center-2.8.0-5 Keeping this bug open to add the initial list of backgrounds.
desktop-backgrounds-basic-2.0-24 should has the prepopulated list of backgrounds.
*** Bug 129561 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***