GConf – GNOME Desktop on steroids
What is GConf ?
GConf is a system of storing preferences of most of the installed applications, as well as the environment and desktop for GNOME for Linux.
GConf made its way into GNOME 2.0 first, but it also can be used in pure GTK+, XLib, KDE or pure text mode. The tool so far isn’t very spectacular, but its developers have quite ambitious plans.
GConf resembles the Windows Registry (and the graphical gconf-editor resembles Regedit) both by looks as well as the principle of operation. It is designed to go beyond Windows 3.1 type of preferences storage, with lots of .ini files in /HOME/.name directories.
GConf is to skip the Regedit stage, but to let the preferences to as many programs as possible be stored in one place, without copying the originals faults (damage to the Windows Registry grossly disables the system completely, the registry has many undocumented features and lacks the support to managing preferences over the network).
