With newer versions of Nautilus (2.31.5 and later) renaming .desktop files actually changes the filename, not the Name field of the file itself.
Nautilus will show the full filename (with the .desktop extension), if the .desktop file is not executable.
For example,
if Firefox.desktop is executable:
Now to see the actual filename, make Firefox.desktop un-executable. Right click -> Properties -> Permissions -> Uncheck Allow executing file as a program.
Now Nautilus will show the full file name:
There seems to be a bug with renaming un-executable .desktop files in Nautilus.
If you don't erase the .desktop extension, the file will
have a double-extension (i.e Firefox.desktop.desktop).
You can get back the full date by recompiling nautilus:
sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus
sudo apt-get install quilt
export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches
apt-get source nautilus
cd nautilus*
quilt new 999_full_dates.patch
quilt edit libnautilus-private/nautilus-column-utilities.c
Change line 77 from
"attribute", "date_modified",
to
"attribute", "date_modified_full",
Rebuild and install modified package:
quilt refresh
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..
killall nautilus
sudo dpkg -i nautilus_*.deb
nautilus &
As always, you have to perform these steps every time there is an update for nautilus in Ubuntu.
Now, a full analysis of the problem:
The actual patch which caused this change is this one.
The function nautilus_file_get_date_as_string gains an extra gboolean parameter "compact" - when true the abbreviated date is returned.
This function is never called directly - it is accessed through the wrapper function nautilus_file_get_string_attribute_q. This function takes attribute parameters like "date_modified". To accommodate the new signature of nautilus_file_get_date_as_string a new attribute is added "date_modified_full". After this change, any code in nautilus which uses the file date string will get the abbreviated date.
Finally, the file properties dialog is updated to use "date_modified_full" attribute.
So in order to have nautilus display the full date in list view, it is only necessary to change one line of code: in libnautilus-private/nautilus-column-utilities.c, line 77 from "date_modified" to "date_modified_full".
A slightly more useful patch could add a new column type which would show the full date, making this an optional feature, and only add 10 lines of code.
Best Answer
So that pane is intended not to be sortable, as evidenced here on the bug-tracker, and that is a bug.
Is it possible that you have accessed your files in that order? I'm running a later version of Nautilus than in the ticket, 3.24-1-1, where-in the Recent Files pane is definitely sorting via most recently accessed at the top.
For your version try clicking the menu button, and setting the "last modified" and "last accessed" fields as visible, and then sorting by those. You should be able to sort it yourself for this version, but a later version will do this automatically.
Hope that helps!