A centralized thing might sound like a good thing, on papers, as you say. But there's a lot of factors that would make this insanely complicated in linux

First, you would need an universal language. I've seen lots of threads talking about this in many forums. Some preople propose a standard based on xml tags, others like tabular text files. The plain truth is that each program has it's propers config format, and for a good reason.

Some config files are intended to be sourced on a shell at some point, so, using any other formated kind of file wouldn't work, since here you need shell syntax, and adding another layer would just overcomplicate the things

This same syntax is not suitable for some other things. And here the discussion could continue for years without the people agreeing. Definitely, I don't want my configs on binary files. If we had a registry alike, I'd vote for a plain text format, like xml. But if nothing is moving in that direction, it's maybe because no one has found a solution that is practical on the real world, and not just on papers.

Whatever it is, I'd prefer this hypothetical new solution to be file system based. If anything, I'd like a standard config file format, but a separate file (and dirs) for everything. I don't want a massive registry file. I never liked that idea.

Lost of efforts are dedicated to standarize some desktop related things, but none is interested in standarizing config files, because:

1.- they are most times trivial to use and understand
2.- they are accessible, even on minimal environments when everything is broken
3.- people is just used to them

The very nature of Unix, methinks...

And in all honesty, in Windoze I think the regristry just kind of took on a life of its own and outgrew what it was meant to do. Like when you see a cluttered office and the person says don't touch anything I know where everything is, even though its a huge mess. I think the users just adapted to the centralized system because they didn't have a choice. I think that system would work better if it could work without the user having to go in and change anything, because it becomes very confusing very quickly. And god forbid you forget to back up the registry first.

Hi there, I think you are getting confused about the link in here, this guy was editing his Windows registry, using Linux, on a dual boot machine. He was not editing a Linux registry, since such a thing does not exist.

Hope that helps you understand...

thanks for the wine clarification! I knew wine was like an emulator that lets me run some win apps however I didn't know it came bundled with a ver of the registry (i just noticed it has a lot less values than a regular win system)
Thanks again!
btw the REGISTRY IS A NIGHTMARE!!!!

...agreed 100%...get used to this system an you'll wonder why on earth anyone would invent the Windows registry
...although I disagree with that, slightly. I think it was part of an M$ campaign (around NT 4, if I remember correctly) to obfuscate the system as far as software suppliers were concerned. At that point, if you remember, it wasn't necessarily a done deal that M$ Office would win out over, for example, WordPerfect, and it was necessary for M$ to give its in-house program whatever edge they could over other software suppliers, so that they could cash in off both the Office package and the OS. (It was particularly not a done deal in the sense that early versions of both M$ Office and competing programs were crap, and the right solution wasn't yet apparent.)

The other part of that was making the OS as difficult to write good software for as possible (including hiding system calls, poor documentation of the registry, etc.). Of course this also gave rise to a situation which the reputation of windows was worsened (you may not believe this is possible...) by badly written apps, but, if you are M$, you probably think that job of selling Office against WordPathetic is now done and they don't have to be so 'hard line' any more, but, for a while, it was a tricky line to walk.

Part was also convincing independant software suppiers that OS2 was the future, and having sold them the dummy, and wrong footed them, it left the field clear for M$ for a time and a time was all M$ needed.

now its the hard line of getting users to use ie7 rather than firefox,
thats why if you try to install firefox in windows it says it is malicious software

The WINE registry is nothing like the WinDuhs registry - information is stored in multiple files (you might compare that with a Microsoft 'hive') but it is all in text and not in binary. Have a look at the files with the settings for your favorite WinDuhs app.

Unix has been evolving since 1971
Linux was based on Unix it has all that evolution in it
the best way to handle the complexities evolved in a multi user multi tasking O/S
is modulation break the system up in to smaller parts
partly because not all systems will need all parts that could be added
( for example most file servers don't have a gui )
mostly because a problem in one part should never ever never cause a problem in another part
so the configuration files are broken up this configuration file for this part another for that part
why use plain text because humans can read plain text ( plain and simple )

Actually they make more money outside of their OS last time I heard, could be wrong, but they provide more than a crappy OS.. they've got other crap they sell as well...

Never tried to use stuff from an existing registry to configure a fresh win install (doing that with .*rc files all the time). The mere thought of such task is damn frightening

Besides, binary config files are teh EVIL!

Hi,
Microsoft still has over 90% (overall) of the market share for their OS back in 2004 it was 97%. You could google for the applications but I don't use them that much. So why waste time.

They did not make all that money developing basic technology or the best SW designs. MS is basically a marketing company.

etc stands for 'editable text configuration', which pretty much sums the files in this directory, despite a few exceptions such as 'shadow' and 'sudoers'. This directory was part of Kenneth Thompson's original Unix and has remained in all 'nixes ever since. So it must be doing something right!.

I agree with you about that. But as much as we can debate it, you can't change the fact that they developed a stranglehold on the market, and in America it doesn't matter what kind of junk you put out as long as you can sell it. And lets be honest, mixed in with the garbage they've put out, there has been some good software and some really good ideas.