One other note I forgot, just in case it helps - this was an FC6 box that I
upgraded to FC7T3 about 4 weeks ago and have kept up-to-date with the following
yum repos:

[development]
name=Fedora Core - Development
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/development/$basearch/os/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=rawhide&arch=$basearch

[extras-development]
name=Fedora Extras - Development Tree
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/development/$basearch/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=extras-devel&arch=$basearch

[livna-development]
name=Livna.org Fedora Compatible Packages (Development)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/development/$basearch

[development-32bit]
name=Fedora Core - Development
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/development/$basearch/os/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=rawhide&arch=i386

[extras-development-32bit]
name=Fedora Extras - Development Tree
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/development/$basearch/
mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=extras-devel&arch=i386

[livna-development-32bit]
name=Livna.org Fedora Compatible Packages (Development)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/development/i386

[flash]
name=macromedia.mplug.org - Flash Plugin
baseurl=http://macromedia.mplug.org/rpm/
        http://macromedia.rediris.es/rpm/
failovermethod=priority

[skype]
name=Skype Repository
baseurl=http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/fedora/5/updates/i586/

Did you use nautilus during this time?

Nope.  I actually never use it to browse my files.  I always use the
gnome-terminal.  I notice the 'nautilus' process is always running, however.  I
guess it's also responsible for the icons on the desktop since doing a 'killall
-s HUP nautilus' makes the icons disappear and reappear.

I guess the summary of the bug should read:
nautilus *process* uses all swap after 1 week - hangs machine

Just to update this bug, I've since switched to the official F7 repos and kept
myself up-to-date from there instead of using rawhide.  After keeping myself
logged in over the weekend, here's what 'top' looks like:


top - 12:30:57 up 3 days, 20:02,  3 users,  load average: 0.54, 0.33, 0.20
Tasks: 172 total,   1 running, 170 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s):  1.0%us,  0.2%sy,  0.0%ni, 98.5%id,  0.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.2%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1026104k total,  1007456k used,    18648k free,     6568k buffers
Swap:  2032212k total,  1094968k used,   937244k free,   173964k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  SWAP COMMAND      
                                                                   
 2933 kylek     15   0 1533m 244m 7940 S    0 24.4   0:36.94 1.3g nautilus     
                                                                   
27638 kylek     15   0  834m 116m  23m S    1 11.6   0:52.90 718m firefox-bin  
                                                                   
 2953 kylek     15   0  729m  24m 9336 S    0  2.4  25:32.19 704m amarokapp    

After doing a 'killall -s HUP nautilus' here's what 'top' looks like (all 'top'
output given by me in this bug is sorted by swap; pressing 'F', 'p', 'Enter'
while running):

top - 12:34:04 up 3 days, 20:05,  3 users,  load average: 0.72, 0.40, 0.24
Tasks: 176 total,   2 running, 173 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.8%us,  0.3%sy,  0.0%ni, 98.1%id,  0.5%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.3%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1026104k total,   858244k used,   167860k free,    10408k buffers
Swap:  2032212k total,   291560k used,  1740652k free,   239932k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  SWAP COMMAND      
                                                                   
 2953 kylek     15   0  730m  24m 9152 S    0  2.5  25:33.10 705m amarokapp    
                                                                   
27638 kylek     15   0  814m 116m  23m S    0 11.6   0:57.25 698m firefox-bin  
                                                                   
 2946 kylek     15   0  681m  15m  10m S    0  1.6   0:01.68 666m pidgin      

I've noticed that this really only happens when I change my background image
often.  I have Wallpaper Tray 0.5.3 (wp_tray) running on my Gnome panel. 
Whenever I tell it to automatically switch my background multiple times a day
(usually every 30-60 minutes), I see the swap issue.  When I turn off the
automatic background switching (so I look at the same image all day), swap use
is greatly minimized.

Could this indicate that there's an issue with the transparency of the desktop
icons or their labels?

Soren, do we need to backport your recent gnome-bg memleak fixes to F-7 ?

gnome-desktop-2.18.3-3.fc7 has been pushed to the Fedora 7 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update gnome-desktop'

I updated to gnome-desktop-2.18.3-3.fc7 as suggested in comment 8 yesterday, and
so far so good.  I re-enabled the automatic background switching in wp_tray for
every 30 minutes and left it running over night.  Swap being used by the
nautilus process was the same when I came in this morning.

This is only 1 day though, so I'll keep an eye on it for the next couple of days
and update this bug with my findings.

I assume this was fixed.

Yes, sorry.  Everything has been behaving MUCH better since the latest release.
 Thanks!