When browsing the file system in Ubuntu using Nautilus, the default view is to not show hidden files. You can easily toggle this setting on or off using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+H or selecting Show Hidden Files from the View menu in Nautilis. But the setting is not permanent once you close Nautilus. Fortunately there is an easy fix to make this setting permanent.



To make this change bring up the run dialog box by pressing Alt+F2 and type gconf-editor, then click on the run button to bring up the Gnome Configuration Editor.





Now browse to the following key:

desktop / gnome / file_views





In the right window pane, look for the entry named show_hidden_files and click on the check box to set the value to true (shown by the check mark).

Now when you browse the file system on your Ubuntu computer, Nautilus will always display hidden files.