You may have noticed in the recent versions of Nautilus the address bar no longer has the handy button to change from breadcrumbs (navigation buttons) to text. I find the text entry very handy for copying and pasting into the terminal, so here is the answer.

To change from breadcrumbs to text press Ctrl-L and to change back again press Esc. The address bar will change back to breadcrumbs when you refresh the view, normally by clicking on another folder. To make a permanent change open Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor (or Alt+F2 and enter gconf-editor) then go to apps/nautilus/preferences and tick the box that says always_use_location_entry.

If you wish to swap between the two views you will have to leave this unticked and use Ctrl-L and Esc.

If you are using 'Mate' in Mint 12 do this for 'Caja' (not 'Nautilus') with 'mateconf-editor' (not 'gconf-editor').Open 'mateconf-editor' then go to '/apps/caja/preferences' and tick the box that says 'always_use_location_entry'.