gconf is a clone of the regedit GUI, but the storage mechanism is not. The article was entirely focused on the storage mechanism. The .gconf directory structur

gconf is a clone of the regedit GUI, but the storage mechanism is not. The article was entirely focused on the storage mechanism. The .gconf directory structure is simply stored in the filesystem. It's not a replacement for /etc, but for the dot files individual apps would otherwise use for per-user configuration. Configuration data is just XML, and can be grepped, edited and deleted from the filesystem just as any other dot files can. The deep directory structures and XML aren't quite as friendly to traditional Unix tools as are traditional dot files, but those tools remain entirely usable, while apps get a shared API for configuration.