Running desktop-i386-20091024.19.iso as a LiveUSB with gnome-menus-2.28.0-3.fc12.i686, there are no icons under the System menu for Preferences, Administration, Help, About This Computer, Lock Screen, Log Out, and Shut Down.
This is intentional
Intentionally permanent? http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA/ReleaseCriteria#Desktop says "All items should have icons". Is that no longer Fedora policy?
That should certainly be clarified to refer to applications only.
Why this isn't configurable?
Why should it ? Anyway, you can set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons in gconf if you want the icons back.
In my opinion, it looks ugly and outdated, just like a change in Fedora window theme (it used to look a lot better in F11, and not to mention the one we had in FC5). Either way, thanks for letting me know. Please document in release notes, because I'm pretty sure other users will complain.
Oh, I see it's already document. Sorry for not checking that.
I can see why it might be a good idea to turn off icons for submenu entries, but why isn't there an icon for e.g. Help, which actually starts a program?
FTR, as of Fedora 21 there are icons for everything in menus.