10 ms·

> The UNIX way is undeniably more flexible since it isn't a virtual filesystem, it is just a filesystem. Unix simply doesn't have a "way" in that regard, other

> The UNIX way is undeniably more flexible since it isn't a virtual filesystem, it is just a filesystem. Unix simply doesn't have a "way" in that regard, other than a loose convention to put text files in "/etc". Every application comes up with its own format. Parsing that file is application-specific. Updating a value in a text file means re-writing the whole file again. It is a technically-inferior approach that has survived in time because text files are still text files.

arsome 4y ago
To be fair, Microsoft doesn't rely on the registry for complex configurations either, even IIS uses .config files.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > even IIS uses .config files. Except that is for serving from a single file share ir a replicated site across a farm of IISes. This has nothing with 'complex configurations'
- layer8 4y ago
  You can’t look at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and claim with a straight face it’s not complex, and it’s a central piece to how a lot of things work in Windows.
  - JonathonW 4y ago
    HKCR has a lot of entries, but the data underneath those entries isn't particularly complex. Its only really big misstep (apart from the fundamental issues with the registry in general) is that file associations and COM registrations are all intermingled in the same namespace. But those can be and are interconnected (see how the Office file types handle their registrations, for example), so it's kind of understandable how they ended up where they did.
    - layer8 4y ago
      The semantics of those entries and their possible subkeys is exceedingly complex. It started out reasonably simple, but features upon features were added with each Windows release, in addition to the application-specific behaviors.
jabbany 4y ago
Modern Linux DEs have an arguably worse version by not only having traditional `/etc` for some types of configurations but _also_ having a "registry" that's really similar to the Windows one for GUI apps... (re: gconf for Gnome)
- xattt 4y ago
  Is Gconf any different from OSX defaults?
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  "Most" here means the one DE that had a Windows fan rewrite its entire config engine with the only goal of being like Windows. An action that created quite a lot of problems soon after the change.
qsort 4y ago
Is there any "way" at all that doesn't suck though? Not having "a way" in this sense is more like a feature, a single source of truth works well if it really is treated as such by all actors. Configurations under unix are a mixture of stdin, config files, env variables and bespoke solutions. Under Windows, you have all of the above and on top of that the registry. Any attempt at a solution in this regard risks being a rerun of the notorious xkcd: 14 ways to specify configurations -> this should satisfy everyone -> 15 ways to specify configurations.
- bluetomcat 4y ago
  On a more philosophical level, the Unix convention is the "liberal" one, giving application writers more freedoms. Liberty enables more flexible applications and more chaos at the same time. A highly structured approach might be beneficial in the short run, but it might prove to be burdening beyond its due date.
  - tfigment 4y ago
    Its partly about where burden is placed. Making it easy for developers sometimes makes it hard on users and admins. And some times it becomes security issue because of varied approaches. Not sure there is right answer especially in open source where its hard to get devs.
  - trevorishere 4y ago
    Application writers are free to use which ever format they choose on Windows, as well. The Registry is just yet another option -- Microsoft does not force developers to use it. I don't see the Unix convention as the more "liberal" one, here. It typically has _one less_ option.
    - nomel 4y ago
      > The Registry is just yet another option It's not just "another option". It's a system standard option that exists, and can be easily accessed programmatically. There's no equivalent in Unix, since there is no standard, and whatever is available will depend on the distribution. "Here's a built in option, but do whatever" is very different than "do whatever!".
stockerta 4y ago
I hate this fanatical love of the UNIX way. I really hate that as of today Windows is the only non UNIX OS. I trully believe that this fact set us back. No more exciting new OSes only boring unix.
- daxvena 4y ago
  I get where you're coming from, but I think the biggest pro for the "UNIX way" is that text on a filesystem extremely accessible. You don't need a specialized tool to read & modify configuration, you just need a text editor. And while there's no standard for how the data is structured, it's usually pretty easy to figure it out from context. I think it's also really easy to underestimate all the tooling built around text. As soon as you try out some other way, you loose out on version control, diffing, grepping, and a whole bunch of other general tools built for text. I think the only way to get around this is to build generalized tools for working with binary data as a data structure. The problem with this approach is that now you need to maintain a database that describes every possible binary format, where text editors only really have to concern themselves with ASCII & unicode to be useful for most cases.
  - guhidalg 4y ago
    Windows and macOS dominate because 99.9% of users do not care about the difference between registries, file systems, text or binary tools, UNIX-like, POSIX, etc… none of these things matter to them! They just want to use a computer and get on with their life. If you lament this as a programmer, build applications that only work on your OS of choice, make them so good or take a dependency on a feature not available with macOS or Windows so that it can’t be ported, and then you can show the world the light of the UNIX mentality or whatever.
    - mhink 4y ago
      > Windows and macOS dominate because 99.9% of users do not care about the difference between registries, file systems, text or binary tools, UNIX-like, POSIX, etc… none of these things matter to them! They just want to use a computer and get on with their life. The flip side of this argument is that the experience of using computers for that 99.9% of users sucks. As software engineers, it's almost our responsibility to argue in favor of better platforms, because every day not spent fighting the platform is a day we could be building better experiences for our users. (Not to mention, every day the platform doesn't inadvertently mess up the user experience is a day of smaller support costs.)
lelanthran 4y ago
> Unix simply doesn't have a "way" in that regard, other than a loose convention to put text files in "/etc". So? The registry doesn't have much of a way either - the actual fields are simply a loose convention. > Every application comes up with its own format. Same with Windows applications - one application might store an IP address as a dotted-octet string, another might store it as a single 32 bit integer. > Parsing that file is application-specific. Same for Windows applications; the subtree for any application is very specific to that application and almost always differs from the subtree for other applications. > Updating a value in a text file means re-writing the whole file again. Not a problem, when it means that breaking a value in a text file breaks only that one application. Break the registry almost always breaks something else, if not the entire system. I'm not saying files in /etc aren't without their problems, I'm saying that all /etc problems are already present in the registry, but the registry adds a few more of its own.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  I can’t and shouldn’t be able to write to /etc as an ordinary or guest user. Er-readying values isn’t done usually with apps. You can get corrupted files if two instances fight for the same file. If that’s your thing, please use mongo. Also, please provide support to all the users. Lastly, if you messed up certain configuration or data files, your system won’t boot either on ANY system. Sounds like you’re just one of many anti-windows people, exactly what was pointed out about people bashing the registry.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > I can’t and shouldn’t be able to write to /etc as an ordinary or guest user I don't believe you can. What distribution is this?
  - jbverschoor 4y ago
    Point about /etc is that it’s just one part of “configuration”. There’s no /etc for users. That’s why we get all these dot.dirs. At least some apps use ~/.config/
indymike 4y ago
> Updating a value in a text file means re-writing the whole file again. It is a technically-inferior approach that has survived in time because text files are still text files. It always seems like registries are trying to solve three different problems: configuration, status and process shared state. Registries seem to work poorly compared to text files for configuration, and work somewhat well for some level of shared state. I think to compare functionality with Linux, you would have to compare /etc, .configs and the /proc filesystem. As for tecnically inferior, the *ix approach seems to have made the right tradeoffs, via the hand of Darwin, rather than some brilliant engineering insight. The article did a good job of explaining what's wrong with Windows' implementation of the registry. What is right with the *ix approach is that configuration files are usually read on startup, and only written to when configuration is changed (which should be infrequent). This works really well for server software, command line utilities, and an awful lot of GUI software. For some GUI software, particularly where you have really complex feature sets, we need to save state of widgets (i.e. saving the default zoom level) and text files may be problematic for this (i.e two instances of the app running), and this is where the registry really shines.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  The biggest issue with etc is that it's owned by root and therefore read only from the application's point of view. So, a great fit for sysadmin-managed configuration, not so great for applications that are GUI-configurable. You end up with a tiered approach of defaults in lib, and cascaded overrides in etc and var.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    Most Linux GUI apps either litter your home folder with dotfiles, dotfolders (both disgusting) or they follow XDG Base Directory specifications and place configurations in ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-${HOME}/.config}
    - dklodh 4y ago
      Most don't even know of XDG. The reason is, there's no central documentation or route for the userland. By Linux, we understand, the kernel and to the kernel developers, that is true. So let alone the anarchy of the userland be handled by distributions and users.
flohofwoe 4y ago
I would actually be better if most of the data that applications store in the registry would instead live in simple text files in the AppData directory (which shouldn't be hidden by default). The registry should be restricted to Windows configuration data (like file types and their associated programs), and information that needs to be shared between installed applications.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  That's been the recommendation since Windows 95. It's easy to suggest and hard to enforce.
marcodiego 4y ago
> Unix simply doesn't have a "way" in that regard Yes. Nothing standardized in this area in UNIX/linux-land. We do have FHS, some xdg specifications and the series of configurations options that were born with dconf which resemble windows registry a bit.
silverlyra 4y ago
OpenWRT worked around this by creating UCI, its own configuration system that it uses to generate all package-specific configuration files: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/uci https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/uci Configuration for all supported packages is stored in files under /etc/config in UCI's own text format, and OpenWRT's init scripts generate service-specific config files based on the UCI settings when the service is (re)started. For example, to configure Samba, users don't edit smb.conf directly, they set UCI settings like samba.workgroup, sambashare.path, etc. There's a `uci` command-line utility to read and modify settings, and UCI forms the basis for the OpenWRT web interface. debconf does something similar for Debian packages, though I haven't seen any packages that use debconf to completely supplant vendor configuration formats the way UCI does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_configuration_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_configuration_system
MaxBarraclough 4y ago
> a loose convention to put text files in "/etc". For user-specific configuration there's also ~, as with ~/.vimrc and ~/.bashrc. Windows has something similar in C:\Users\theuser\AppData. edit And ~/.config/, as others have mentioned.

arsome 4y ago

To be fair, Microsoft doesn't rely on the registry for complex configurations either, even IIS uses .config files.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
> even IIS uses .config files. Except that is for serving from a single file share ir a replicated site across a farm of IISes. This has nothing with 'complex configurations'
layer8 4y ago
You can’t look at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and claim with a straight face it’s not complex, and it’s a central piece to how a lot of things work in Windows.
- JonathonW 4y ago
  HKCR has a lot of entries, but the data underneath those entries isn't particularly complex. Its only really big misstep (apart from the fundamental issues with the registry in general) is that file associations and COM registrations are all intermingled in the same namespace. But those can be and are interconnected (see how the Office file types handle their registrations, for example), so it's kind of understandable how they ended up where they did.
  - layer8 4y ago
    The semantics of those entries and their possible subkeys is exceedingly complex. It started out reasonably simple, but features upon features were added with each Windows release, in addition to the application-specific behaviors.

jabbany 4y ago

Modern Linux DEs have an arguably worse version by not only having traditional `/etc` for some types of configurations but _also_ having a "registry" that's really similar to the Windows one for GUI apps... (re: gconf for Gnome)

xattt 4y ago
Is Gconf any different from OSX defaults?
marcosdumay 4y ago
"Most" here means the one DE that had a Windows fan rewrite its entire config engine with the only goal of being like Windows. An action that created quite a lot of problems soon after the change.

qsort 4y ago

Is there any "way" at all that doesn't suck though? Not having "a way" in this sense is more like a feature, a single source of truth works well if it really is treated as such by all actors. Configurations under unix are a mixture of stdin, config files, env variables and bespoke solutions. Under Windows, you have all of the above and on top of that the registry. Any attempt at a solution in this regard risks being a rerun of the notorious xkcd: 14 ways to specify configurations -> this should satisfy everyone -> 15 ways to specify configurations.

bluetomcat 4y ago
On a more philosophical level, the Unix convention is the "liberal" one, giving application writers more freedoms. Liberty enables more flexible applications and more chaos at the same time. A highly structured approach might be beneficial in the short run, but it might prove to be burdening beyond its due date.
- tfigment 4y ago
  Its partly about where burden is placed. Making it easy for developers sometimes makes it hard on users and admins. And some times it becomes security issue because of varied approaches. Not sure there is right answer especially in open source where its hard to get devs.
- trevorishere 4y ago
  Application writers are free to use which ever format they choose on Windows, as well. The Registry is just yet another option -- Microsoft does not force developers to use it. I don't see the Unix convention as the more "liberal" one, here. It typically has _one less_ option.
  - nomel 4y ago
    > The Registry is just yet another option It's not just "another option". It's a system standard option that exists, and can be easily accessed programmatically. There's no equivalent in Unix, since there is no standard, and whatever is available will depend on the distribution. "Here's a built in option, but do whatever" is very different than "do whatever!".

stockerta 4y ago

I hate this fanatical love of the UNIX way. I really hate that as of today Windows is the only non UNIX OS. I trully believe that this fact set us back. No more exciting new OSes only boring unix.

daxvena 4y ago
I get where you're coming from, but I think the biggest pro for the "UNIX way" is that text on a filesystem extremely accessible. You don't need a specialized tool to read & modify configuration, you just need a text editor. And while there's no standard for how the data is structured, it's usually pretty easy to figure it out from context. I think it's also really easy to underestimate all the tooling built around text. As soon as you try out some other way, you loose out on version control, diffing, grepping, and a whole bunch of other general tools built for text. I think the only way to get around this is to build generalized tools for working with binary data as a data structure. The problem with this approach is that now you need to maintain a database that describes every possible binary format, where text editors only really have to concern themselves with ASCII & unicode to be useful for most cases.
- guhidalg 4y ago
  Windows and macOS dominate because 99.9% of users do not care about the difference between registries, file systems, text or binary tools, UNIX-like, POSIX, etc… none of these things matter to them! They just want to use a computer and get on with their life. If you lament this as a programmer, build applications that only work on your OS of choice, make them so good or take a dependency on a feature not available with macOS or Windows so that it can’t be ported, and then you can show the world the light of the UNIX mentality or whatever.
  - mhink 4y ago
    > Windows and macOS dominate because 99.9% of users do not care about the difference between registries, file systems, text or binary tools, UNIX-like, POSIX, etc… none of these things matter to them! They just want to use a computer and get on with their life. The flip side of this argument is that the experience of using computers for that 99.9% of users sucks. As software engineers, it's almost our responsibility to argue in favor of better platforms, because every day not spent fighting the platform is a day we could be building better experiences for our users. (Not to mention, every day the platform doesn't inadvertently mess up the user experience is a day of smaller support costs.)

lelanthran 4y ago

> Unix simply doesn't have a "way" in that regard, other than a loose convention to put text files in "/etc". So? The registry doesn't have much of a way either - the actual fields are simply a loose convention. > Every application comes up with its own format. Same with Windows applications - one application might store an IP address as a dotted-octet string, another might store it as a single 32 bit integer. > Parsing that file is application-specific. Same for Windows applications; the subtree for any application is very specific to that application and almost always differs from the subtree for other applications. > Updating a value in a text file means re-writing the whole file again. Not a problem, when it means that breaking a value in a text file breaks only that one application. Break the registry almost always breaks something else, if not the entire system. I'm not saying files in /etc aren't without their problems, I'm saying that all /etc problems are already present in the registry, but the registry adds a few more of its own.

jbverschoor 4y ago
I can’t and shouldn’t be able to write to /etc as an ordinary or guest user. Er-readying values isn’t done usually with apps. You can get corrupted files if two instances fight for the same file. If that’s your thing, please use mongo. Also, please provide support to all the users. Lastly, if you messed up certain configuration or data files, your system won’t boot either on ANY system. Sounds like you’re just one of many anti-windows people, exactly what was pointed out about people bashing the registry.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > I can’t and shouldn’t be able to write to /etc as an ordinary or guest user I don't believe you can. What distribution is this?
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  Point about /etc is that it’s just one part of “configuration”. There’s no /etc for users. That’s why we get all these dot.dirs. At least some apps use ~/.config/

indymike 4y ago

> Updating a value in a text file means re-writing the whole file again. It is a technically-inferior approach that has survived in time because text files are still text files. It always seems like registries are trying to solve three different problems: configuration, status and process shared state. Registries seem to work poorly compared to text files for configuration, and work somewhat well for some level of shared state. I think to compare functionality with Linux, you would have to compare /etc, .configs and the /proc filesystem. As for tecnically inferior, the *ix approach seems to have made the right tradeoffs, via the hand of Darwin, rather than some brilliant engineering insight. The article did a good job of explaining what's wrong with Windows' implementation of the registry. What is right with the *ix approach is that configuration files are usually read on startup, and only written to when configuration is changed (which should be infrequent). This works really well for server software, command line utilities, and an awful lot of GUI software. For some GUI software, particularly where you have really complex feature sets, we need to save state of widgets (i.e. saving the default zoom level) and text files may be problematic for this (i.e two instances of the app running), and this is where the registry really shines.

mikepurvis 4y ago
The biggest issue with etc is that it's owned by root and therefore read only from the application's point of view. So, a great fit for sysadmin-managed configuration, not so great for applications that are GUI-configurable. You end up with a tiered approach of defaults in lib, and cascaded overrides in etc and var.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  Most Linux GUI apps either litter your home folder with dotfiles, dotfolders (both disgusting) or they follow XDG Base Directory specifications and place configurations in ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-${HOME}/.config}
  - dklodh 4y ago
    Most don't even know of XDG. The reason is, there's no central documentation or route for the userland. By Linux, we understand, the kernel and to the kernel developers, that is true. So let alone the anarchy of the userland be handled by distributions and users.

flohofwoe 4y ago

I would actually be better if most of the data that applications store in the registry would instead live in simple text files in the AppData directory (which shouldn't be hidden by default). The registry should be restricted to Windows configuration data (like file types and their associated programs), and information that needs to be shared between installed applications.

WorldMaker 4y ago
That's been the recommendation since Windows 95. It's easy to suggest and hard to enforce.

marcodiego 4y ago

> Unix simply doesn't have a "way" in that regard Yes. Nothing standardized in this area in UNIX/linux-land. We do have FHS, some xdg specifications and the series of configurations options that were born with dconf which resemble windows registry a bit.

silverlyra 4y ago

OpenWRT worked around this by creating UCI, its own configuration system that it uses to generate all package-specific configuration files: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/uci https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/uci Configuration for all supported packages is stored in files under /etc/config in UCI's own text format, and OpenWRT's init scripts generate service-specific config files based on the UCI settings when the service is (re)started. For example, to configure Samba, users don't edit smb.conf directly, they set UCI settings like samba.workgroup, sambashare.path, etc. There's a `uci` command-line utility to read and modify settings, and UCI forms the basis for the OpenWRT web interface. debconf does something similar for Debian packages, though I haven't seen any packages that use debconf to completely supplant vendor configuration formats the way UCI does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_configuration_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_configuration_system

MaxBarraclough 4y ago

> a loose convention to put text files in "/etc". For user-specific configuration there's also ~, as with ~/.vimrc and ~/.bashrc. Windows has something similar in C:\Users\theuser\AppData. edit And ~/.config/, as others have mentioned.