[Inkscape-user] Inkscape pays no attention to my swatch file

I'm using Ubuntu Lucid, Inkscape 0.47 r22583 (Apr 4 2010)

I've got a file in my ~/.inkscape/palettes directory that has in the recent past worked fine in Inkscape as a swatch file. (It's a simple GIMP format file.) However, the file isn't working for me on a new Ubuntu installation, and I can't figure out what it is I need to do to get the program to use the file. There don't seem to be any configuration options or preferences about the swatch file, and from everything I've read it just looks at anything in that "palettes" subdirectory. I've checked permissions and ownership of the directories and the file, and everything looks fine to me (all files owned by me and readable).

Is there some trick to getting this working?