Setting the Nautilus file manager to default to opening folders in the same window

From K12LTSP Wiki

The file manager in the Gnome desktop, called Nautilus, controls things like each user's home folder icon on his/her desktop. Nautilus's default behavior is to open each folder in its own window. While this may be intuitive for new users, it often gets annoying and cluttered after a short while. Each user can change the behavior to opening each folder in the same window (and showing a tree on the left) by going to System-> Preferences -> File Management in the menu system, and under the Behavior tab, checking the 'Always open in browser windows' checkbox.

To make this the default behavior for all users requires a different approach. Login to the server console as root, and install gconf-editor via yum from a command line (or use yumex):

yum install gconf-editor -y

After that's installed, run it:

gconf-editor

In the tree structure in the left pane, go to apps -> nautilus -> preferences. In the right pane, the first item should be 'always_use_browser; click the checkbox which should mark it with a check; then right-click it and choose 'Set as default' from the pop-up menu. Go to File -> Close to finish. This will set the default behavior for all users.