[plug] Registry info

[Tom Atkinson]

Oliver,

The biggest thing about such a scheme, and the reason it is important
for Unix/Linux, is that it makes administration of the system
considerably easier.

You could have a "control panel" type thing, inside which you would find
all the configuration settings, be they for "system" things such as
networking or software applications such as Sendmail.

This single act of putting the settings in the one place, making them
considerably more accessible and creating a *standard* way of modifying
them, is what would make it much easier for the more lay folk to be able
to configure their system.  You can in fact say that Linux would be "as
useable" as Windows 95/98/NT.

At present, configuration settings are scattered all over the system,
usually in flat ascii files that use a variety of different
formats/syntax.  Administration and configuration can only be done by
those that are highly skilled.

Just because the registry approach is similar to that used in Windows
doesn't make it the wrong approach.  Nobody is saying that you have to
do it like Windows; or that the registry must be binary and not ascii;
or that it must live in ONE file.

If the registry scheme under Windows has problems, maybe it's because
Microsoft didn't design, or implementate it right.  The same idea under
Linux could be done much, much better because of the "bazaar" style of
design/implementation.

To do the registry thing properly requires modifying all the
applications, so that they work with the registry, rather than their
original config files.  This is a huge task, which is a drawback, but by
no means so huge as to not warrant doing.

A successful implementation of the registry idea would mean that your
Mum and Dad could "get by" with Linux to the same degree as they do
today with Windows 95/98.  This would mean market share for Linux of (at
least) 10 times what it is today, which would bring the commercial
software applications (such as Photoshop) like no other.

Tom Atkinson


Oliver White wrote:
> 
> This was indeed what I meant. There was discussion of the concept on
> lwn.net a few weeks back. I'm not certain it's a good idea, or even what
> it is exactly. Some suggest that simply because Windows implement the
> concept so badly, we should not abandon the concept. I'm interested in
> the implications/advantages/disadvantages, and indeed a description, of
> such a administration device in the GNU/linux system.