Changing the Default Gnome Menu Icon

Ok, after googleing and looking for answers I didn’t really find anything that worked for changing the default icon for Gnome. Some articles suggested changing lines in gconf editor. Some articles suggested changing about 5 different system icons and see which one works for you. After my own trial an error I found depending on which version of Gnome you have there are different ways to go about this.

Changing the Default Gnome Menu Icon for Debian Etch (stable)

 

Note: This method was tested on 2.14.3 version of Gnome. For newer versions of Gnome the file you are looking for is in /usr/share/icons/THEMENAME/scaleable or /22×22/places. See the next section.

The file we are looking for is called gnome-logo-icon-transparent.png. It is located in /usr/share/pixmaps/.

Rename the original just in case you want to use it again:
mv gnome-logo-icon-transparent.png gnome-logo-icon-transparent.png.bak

Move/rename the image of your choice to, gnome-logo-transparent.png. In this case I am making a copy of the debian logo and naming it.
cp gnome-debian.png gnome-logo-icon-transparent.png

Restart the gnome panel:
killall gnome-panel

After you kill the gnome panel you should be greeted with another panel with the new logo in it as like in this example:

Changing the Default Gnome Menu Icon for Debian Lenny (testing)

 
Note: This method was tested on 2.20.3 version of Gnome.

The file we are looking for is called start-here.png. It is located in /usr/share/icons/THEMENAME/scaleable or /22×22/places.

Changing the Default Gnome Menu Icon for Ubuntu

 
The place to change the Ubuntu icon for Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) is:

/usr/share/icons/Tango/scalable/places/start-here.svg

Thanks GregR for the verification on this one. Also if there are any other distributions that you have had luck with changing the default Gnome icon please let me know. As I switch distributions around I will continue to update this page for more instructions on how to change the default Gnome icon for each distribution.