Comment 16 for bug 1170483

In reply to Comment #6:
Based on this bug, 13.10 introduces a potential hierachical bug using gnome-settings-daemon-3.8.3~raring2-0ubuntu1

The bug manifests itself in 13.10 by exhibiting exactly the same symptoms as this bug even when 'show-desktop-icons' is enabled for org.gnome.desktop.background in dconf.

In addition, the bug doesn't occur immediately on desktop session startup - but after some use, all desktop icons disappear and this last window minimise freeze bug starts to appear.

Disabling and re-enabling 'show-desktop-icons' dconf entry for org.gnome.desktop.background mentioned above works around the bug.

Disabling the following Ubuntu patches for gnome-settings-daemon fixes this:
revert_background_dropping.patch
52_sync_background_to_accountsservice.patch
git_revert_remove_automount_helper.patch

But we're still left with the original bug of needing 'show-desktop-icons' dconf entry for org.gnome.desktop.background enabled.

Feel free to link this bug to any other bugs that share the same symptom...