How do I set default view to 'list' in Nautilus file manager?

First, reset all previous folder view preferences by deleting ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata (source)

Next, open Nautilus and select Edit -> Preferences -> Views (tab) -> View new folders using , and change to List View:

For everyone who likes to do things by terminal changing the settings for nautilus can be done by

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-folder-viewer 'list-view'

If you need to find out which settings are applied to nautilus you can go

gsettings get org.gnome.nautilus.preferences default-folder-viewer

The credits for this post go to: https://scivision.co/ubuntu-setting-nautilus-default-view-to-detailed-list-view/

Other possible way of solving this is through dconf Editor, see org.gnome.nautilus.preferences and default-folder-viewer there.

This means there would be a simple one-line expression to change this, so you can include it easily to your config/setup scripts. See more on dconf.