fedora-list Digest, Vol 5, Issue 326

Matt Morgan matt.morgan-fedora-list at brooklynmuseum.org
Fri Jul 23 15:43:20 UTC 2004


On 07/23/2004 11:19 AM, david wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>
>I just want to know something,
>
>Windows uses the registry what does linux use??
>If possible where can I find out detailed information bout this??
>
>
>Thanxs a million
>dave
>
>  
>
There's no analogous thing to the Windows registry in Linux. For which I 
am thankful almost every day!

Almost all settings for apps and system services (daemons) are stored in 
text files, that is, regular, blessedly readable, copy-able, editable, 
and backup-able text files on the hard disk. You'll find a lot of them 
in /etc or some sub-directory, but it depends a lot on the application 
or daemon, and somewhat on the method of installation (RPMs and other 
packages will put them in some consistent place, but if you're 
installing by hand you can pretty much do whatever you want--not that 
there's ever usually a good reason to change anything).

All user-settings are stored within the user's home directory, which is 
fairly analogous to a Windows User Profile, except that again, 
everything's just a regular text file and there is no HKEY_USERS (or 
HKEY_CURRENT_USER) anywhere. Mostly these settings are stored in files 
named with an initial "." which makes them hidden files, so users don't 
mostly see them unless they want to.

Probably to get more detail you should start from reading up on the 
applications you're curious about. As someone who started as a Unix 
admin, switched to mainly Windows, and is now mainly switched to Linux, 
I can say for sure that the Unix/Linux way is better. But of course it's 
hard to get used to when you're used to something else and I'm still 
re-learning.

--Matt





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