From: eric at arcticbears.com (Eric Paynter)
Subject: M$ - so what should they do?

On Mon, June 21, 2004 12:07 pm, joe said:
> For the first one, what do you propose as an answer? Obviously going to a
> bunch of separate text files you have to configure gets away from that
> single point of failure of a single registry but adds all sorts of
> management issues and having to chase all over to gather info about what
> is on your machine. What is the right answer to this one?

Having all the configs as text files in /etc works fine for Unix-like
systems. You can use any editor to look at the config - no need for some
proprietary editor (regedit). Automating config changes is as easy as
writing a simple shell script. Each config is named after its application,
so it's easy to know which is which, and if you need to restore an
application, just install the app then copy your backup config file into
place. As a matter of fact, an entire system can be restored by
re-installing the apps and only restoring /etc (configs) and /home (user
data) from backup. Try that on Windows. Have you ever had a successful
Windows restore without a full system backup or without re-configuring
everything from scratch? It is extremely difficult. Why? Because of the
registry...

The "config file mess" is an excuse made up by MS to sell the registry
concept. The registry does not make it easier to manage application
configuration. Instead, it makes it considerably more complex.

The real reason for the registry is to make it difficult to copy an
application from one machine to another. In other words, it's a copy
proctection scheme. Remember in the days of Win 3.1, you could do that? It
all broke in Win95 with the registry.

-Eric

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