It seems its an optional behavior which can be controlled within the theme.
The bugzilla page about this bug is actually very interesting: all users say its a bug, all develops say its a feature. Perhaps this can be fixed this in the human-theme? There is a comment (no. 11) on the bugzilla page about this: style "default-style" { GtkComboBox::appears-as-list = 1 } If it is this easy to fix I would recommend to do so. There are just too many cases where it looks and feels unpolished/buggy and one of them is in Gaim. -- Status list has empty space on top when list popups at the bottom https://launchpad.net/bugs/64631 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs