You can try to upgrade several important packages (gtk, glib, etc.) from the ricotz/testing ppa, then compile Nautilus 3.6 from source.
NOTE: Due to you are going to upgrade several important packages of your system, I strongly recommend to do this in a Virtual Machine or in a Test Machine only for testing purposes to see is everything is OK.
Make sure you have enable the "Source code repository"
In the Menu Bar choose Edit -> Software Sources. Click to enable "Source code repository".
Just in case I use the "Main Server" to Download.
Then..
1) Open a Terminal and install the following packages.
sudo apt-get install build-essential libtracker-sparql-0.14-dev wget
2) Install build dependencies.
sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus
3) Add ricotz ppa and upgrade the system.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
4) Trash-Full icon in nautilus-places.
Nautilus 3.6.3 use the following icon for the trash-full (user-trash-full-symbolic.svg), not present by default in Ubuntu 12.04.
You can grab the icon from Ubuntu 13.04 to put it in /usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/status/ directory.
To avoid this:
Once you have the correct icon type in the Terminal.
sudo mv /path/to/trash/image/user-trash-full-symbolic.svg /usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/status/
sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/status/user-trash-full-symbolic.svg
sudo gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/gnome/
To look like this:
5) Create a folder to download the source code.
mkdir ~/Downloads/src
cd ~/Downloads/src
6) Download the nautilus 3.6.3 (raring) source code from Launchpad.
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/raring/+source/nautilus/1:3.6.3-0ubuntu16/+files/nautilus_3.6.3.orig.tar.xz
7) Extract the source code.
tar -xvf nautilus_3.6.3.orig.tar.xz
8) Basic steps to compile & install. (You can change the steps according to your needs, add prefix etc.).
cd nautilus-3.6.3/
./configure
make
sudo make install
9) Kill nautilus.
10) Just in case... set default prefereces like show-desktop-icons, no show trash-icon in desktop, etc.
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.desktop trash-icon-visible false
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.desktop home-icon-visible false
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons true
11) Finally reboot the system to see the changes.
Result:
Hope this helps.
Best Answer
Patching nautilus
The F3 functionality was removed via this bugzilla report.
The bugzilla report contains the patch used to actually remove the functionality.
As you can see from the stats - it was a sizable patch crossing many source files
Thus, to reinstate this, you'll need to reverse engineer this. What makes this more difficult, is that the code base of nautilus has changed considerably between Nautilus from Gnome 3.2 when F3 was available to todays Gnome 3.10/3.12 code base.
Thus its not going to be an easy, "take this diff and insert into the source file". You'll likely to have to manually match up the various functions and manually edit the source.
Hints:
To build nautilus is relatively straightforward:
Make your changes. Compile via either running the autogen in the top-tree level or seeing if a
debuild -us -uc
method works if you've patched the source files in thedebian/patches
folder.More information here how to build.
If this seems like hardwork - it is. Good luck. I'm sure you'll have a grateful community if you manage to hack it.
If you like an easier life, this Q&A gives alternative methods and alternative file-managers that has this capability.