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>>>>> "John" == John Thompson <[email protected]> writes:

John> On 2008-01-27, JM <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I was wondering.....does Linux have a registry like windows? If
>> so, does Linux come with any kind of registry mechanic tool?

John> No. Rather than a monolithic registry most linux programs
John> use flat text files (although I've seen some xml files
John> lately) stored in /etc.

And $HOME/ too, for sound reasons!



John> Although editing individual text configuration files may
John> seem unfashionably archaic, it does mean you can use simple
John> tools to fix them in the event of problems, and if one file
John> gets hosed, the rest of your system is less likely to be
John> affected.

And that's just one tiny part of it. How about annotating the lines
in the config file using the commenting capability? (Why config file
format doesn't allow comments!?) Being text files also means that the
config files can be easily backed up (choose your favourite:
tar+gz/bz2/7z, zip, 7z, ...), cloned onto other systems (in case NFS
sharing isn't possible) (choose your favourite: scp, rsync, unison,
....) and easily version-controlled (choose your favourite: RCS, CVS,
SVN).

There are so many useful possible combinations (annotation + backing
up + cloning + versioning) that I won't expect to be replicated for a
proprietary, cryptic, binary file.


--
Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: [email protected]
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee