Something that has bothered me a lot in Ubuntu was the fact that Nautilus presented me the Icons view by default. After some searching I found the way to change this default value.
To do this open a shell terminal. On the prompt launch the following application:
gconf-editor
This will launch the Configuration Editor. Navigate to apps > nautilus > preferences and change the default_folder_viewer from icon_view to list_view.
Et voilà. Every folder you open will now be presented in the list view.
