Yeah, most of the Windows registry is like a black box. They not only want your software to be closed source they want your options to be closed source

I really wonder why people try to compare things always.

You are using a different OS, assume it. Why will not windows copy the /etc/* method instead? Absurd question, isn't it?

A registry editor is not viable for a simple reason: it would need extensive customization (or better, a whole redesign from the ground) for each distro, and, you would need to patch it each time that a simple program changes it's configuration files. That is because there's no standard format, and each program is configured with a different method, syntax, philosophy and semantics. Since there's no standard, your fictional registry would have to do all the conversion itself, and would break with every new version of a config file. So, at a given time, only 50% of your config files could be configured with it. The rest would just be not configurable and/or broken, leading to a big mess.

The closest you are going to get is the control panels that some distros like suse ships, and that are completely customized to fit the configuration of that distro, and nothing else.

Sorry Sir I'm just a newbie in Linux that's why I've lots of questions. I just need to compare both OS in order to get the exact answer.

Sorry again guys and thanks.

Don't be sorry. It is a natural thing to ask. I didn't want to sound harsh. But you really need to forget how windows work. This is not windows, it's a completely different system with a very different philosophy behind it. It was never meant to work like windows.

There's no registry, no Start button and no C: drive, and there'll probably never be.

Thanks sir for replying.

If I installed a software or hardware, does it automatically create a .conf file in the /etc directory?

Usually yes, if one is needed of course.

Yves.

Thanks again guys.

hi guys,

I typed regedit and this came up:

cesar@work:~> regedit
wine: created the configuration directory '/home/cesar/.wine'
Could not load Mozilla. HTML rendering will be disabled.
wine: configuration in '/home/cesar/.wine' has been updated.

and the Windows registry opened!!! is it because I have a dual boot system so linux opens the windows registry?

WEIRD!!!

No. It's a tool that comes with wine. Wine is an alternative implementation of the windows api that can be used to run some windows programs on linux (you can think of it as an emulator, though technically it isn't).

This registry editor has nothing to do with your windows registry (you can easily see that it contains very few values compared), and it can't be used to configure any linux related stuff either.

There are many other tools that gets installed with wine, like winemine, notepad or winefile.

1. Are all in the FileSystem directory are .conf format? I mean all the directories in the FileSystem and inside those directories are in .conf format?
2. If Linux don't have registry editor, how does Linux managed all the programs?

Dude, seriously, are you reading the replies? It's been mentioned several times that Linux holds it's or majority of it's configurations in the /etc directory as ASCII text files.

Thanks for the reply sir.

Sorry to compare apples and oranges but think of the way linux stores settings more to Windoze 3.11. You used to type sysedit and blam you get a text editor with a bunch of crap like win.ini and type away. Kind of the same principle. I always thought the windows registry was a nightmare anyways. They did everything they could to keep you from changing anything. I bought it I should be able to do whatever I want with it. And I guess you could if you wanted to spend all night in regedit.

To be fair to MS, the registry sounds like quite a good idea on paper.
A single system-wide repository of config data, with the ability to merge configuration sets without major (sed/grep/awk)-foo and a consistent API sounds pretty convincing.

I'll be sticking with flat text files myself, though. gconf, registry et al might be nice for developers, but they're a royal pain in the ass for users and admins on a day to day basis.

Dave

Well they've made how many billions of $, maybe they know better than we do