I use Archlinux, and just used "pacman -S thunar" to install it. When I run thunar it does not show any icons for drives and directories, but I am able to browse through directories and all clicking on the text labels. It shows the following in the console: (thunar:14566): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed Maybe there is something missing on the system, but the package manager should have installed everything needed.
Can you run the following to obtain a backtrace of thunar? G_DEBUG=fatal-criticals gdb Thunar run ... wait until it crashes ... bt That would be very helpful, otherwise we can't tell where it's generating the critical warning.