If you mean the color icons, you can easily switch back to those in the Welcome Dialog that appears when you first open GIMP (look in the Personalize tab). It's the first thing I do when I install GIMP on a new machine. :)
Thank you for this.
Also small world, floating point JPEG person here.
oh wow, i never realized that this is there, in such a convenient location too. and you can't just change the icon style, but also disable the tool groups which was the most annoying change i found because it makes finding the right tool harder. (i'd love tool groups where the tools are grouped but not folded, or in a way where i can expand certain groups that i use often)