Aisleriot solitaire not showing background texture

Actually, our version of gnome-games is older than the indicated changelog, so maybe the newer version is the solution.

Support for background images in Aisleriot was removed:
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-games/commit/?id=9ff16a30b2671b4cb58e02c4a81bf69b7d001251

We can set the color to something else, it will be a more significant patch to re-enable background image support.

What was the rationale in this change? Aisleriot looks gorgeous in Lucid, with the background texture that looks like a real cassino card table velvet... and now in Maverick (and above) it looks so... dull and plain. Why was background support removed? Any fair reason?

I think I discussed the issue with the developer and he didn't seem averse to adding support back in, someone just needs to do it. Probably not too difficult.

@Scott: But was there any particular reason for the support to be removed?

I doubt anyone but the original developers would have the knowledge to add the support back in. Is there any way to contact upstream devs and kindly ask this feature?

Maverick, Natty and now Oneiric have a plain background. I know for sure that Aisleriot is one of the first apps new users try when experimenting with Ubuntu for the first time. So a pleasant look is very important. It is sad Aisleriot now looks worse than in Lucid.

I gave my mother her first linux laptop. First thing she complained about was the ugly, non-replacable background in solitaire (aisleriot). I tried to change it, but it seems impossible without going deep into the code.

Now she keeps using her old Windows Vista laptop for that reason. Bug #1 is just a joke, right?

By the way: as a workaround it is possible to set the background by overriding the gtk theme css by adding something like this to ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:

AisleriotBoard, aisleriot-board {
    background-image: url('/home/seb/Pictures/aisleriot-background.jpg');
}