Interesting. Mint + Cinnamon desktop has a very nice, crisp look and feel. Thanks for pointing me to the part of the configuration that controls the icon display.
Yes, that is correct. And it can be dependent on the Desktop Environment as well. IIRC, not all of them allow you to turn the preference on or off in their own preferences dialogs, but the GNOME Tweak Tools mentioned here may let you do it.