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> This is a far cry from /etc/progname.conf in Linux. Some of these arguments are not really in good faith. First, this isn't a technical issue with the regist

> This is a far cry from /etc/progname.conf in Linux. Some of these arguments are not really in good faith. First, this isn't a technical issue with the registry, but with how it's been used over the years and never "refactored" - a distinct issue. Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... Besides, most of the post is how anyone with a text editor and admin rights can bork/hack the machine. As if someone with admin rights couldn't bork/hack the machine in a billion ways. Or if someone with admin rights on linux couldn't write garbage to /dev/sda1 and "hide" something from the OS.

jeroenhd 4y ago
I love editing files in /etc ending in conf! Some are pseudo-INI (OpenSSL), some are pseudo-XML (Apache2 and friends), some are some kind of unholy amalgamation between C and YAML (nginx, dhcp daemons), others are some kind of TOML derivative (systemd, NetworkManager) and there's also some diet JSON in there! Netplan uses YAML, of course, though JSON will probably also parse. It's always a fun adventure to reverse engineer these file formats. Of course, most important files contain whitespace separated lines of configuration of which the meaning is only clear if you read the comments above it (cron, fstab, crypttab) or secretly bash scripts (GRUB config and many other files in /etc/default). Then there's user configuration stuff. Sure, HKLM vs HKCU is kind of weird, but the user configuration structure in the Linux home directory is an argument against intelligent design. ~/.config, ~/.programname, ~/.local or ~/snap/<name>/current/<randomfile>? Roll the dice and find out! You may be able to find the setting you're looking for in the DConf Editor but if you can't find it there, grep and prayer is your best bet. The Windows registry may be the result of a flawed execution, but I'll take it over the mess in Linux any day. Sadly, the registry has fallen out of fashion in Windows so now managing random configuration files somewhere in %USERPROFILE% (if you're lucky and the programmer hasn't hardcoded C:\Users\<username> as a path) just like on Linux. By the way, who needs the "hidden" FS flag anyway? Just start the filename with a period and pretend the ls-bug-dressed-up-as-a-feature for hiding files and folders is a standard every platform sticks to!
- cycomanic 4y ago
  > I love editing files in /etc ending in conf! Some are pseudo-INI (OpenSSL), some are pseudo-XML (Apache2 and friends), some are some kind of unholy amalgamation between C and YAML (nginx, dhcp daemons), others are some kind of TOML derivative (systemd, NetworkManager) and there's also some diet JSON in there! Netplan uses YAML, of course, though JSON will probably also parse. It's always a fun adventure to reverse engineer these file formats. Sure it would be great if all configuration was written in a single configuration format. Life would also be so much easier if there was only one ultimate programming language so we would only have to learn one. Unfortunately reality is messy and for a variety of reasons we have different formats. As a side note, I don't think I ever ran into a syntax error for a system configuration file, because I couldn't figure out the format. The first time that happened to me was when editing a yaml file for CI. > Of course, most important files contain whitespace separated lines of configuration of which the meaning is only clear if you read the comments above it (cron, fstab, crypttab) or secretly bash scripts (GRUB config and many other files in /etc/default). Well there is "man fstab", "man 5 cron" etc., so the file formats and options are formatted. However the complaint that the default files are so well commented that one understands what the different options are without actually reading the docs is just weird to me. How is that worse than some random registry key that is not documented anywhere without comments (they are not possible AFAIK) and without knowing what type they should take. > Then there's user configuration stuff. Sure, HKLM vs HKCU is kind of weird, but the user configuration structure in the Linux home directory is an argument against intelligent design. ~/.config, ~/.programname, ~/.local or ~/snap/<name>/current/<randomfile>? Which program saves configuration inside ~.local? I'm not aware of any and they generally should not. Also adding adding snap to that list is a bit besides the point, I don't think containers typically save their configuration in the registry either? > Roll the dice and find out! You may be able to find the setting you're looking for in the DConf Editor but if you can't find it there, grep and prayer is your best bet. I actually dislike that gnome uses dconf (which is a better organised registry), I think it would be better if they instead would have text files as well. I understand it's largely for performance reasons. > The Windows registry may be the result of a flawed execution, but I'll take it over the mess in Linux any day. So how do you know what registry keys to change to achieve a certain configuration (without documentation, because you didn't like that on Linux either)? > Sadly, the registry has fallen out of fashion in Windows so now managing random configuration files somewhere in %USERPROFILE% (if you're lucky and the programmer hasn't hardcoded C:\Users\<username> as a path) just like on Linux. By the way, who needs the "hidden" FS flag anyway? Just start the filename with a period and pretend the ls-bug-dressed-up-as-a-feature for hiding files and folders is a standard every platform sticks to!
lixtra 4y ago
> Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... In unix man my.conf will work for most sane programs.
OskarS 4y ago
> Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... In principle, sure. But in practice, using /etc to edit configuration data is not that hard, and every Linux user does it all the time. Different software uses different configuration formats, sure (though it's worth nothing that NixOS is doing really clever things to solve that problem), but it's really not that hard or scary. Manually editing the registry though... That way lies madness. It's much scarier and it's much more fragile.
- izacus 4y ago
  > Manually editing the registry though... That way lies madness. It's much scarier and it's much more fragile. How... exactly? There's no way to create a syntax error as trivial as you can in config files. How is using regedit or powershell commands more fragile (I understand "scarier" in a way everything you're not used to is scary).
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    Well the article points to a way of preventing following entries to be read by having an entry in non alphabetical order. But how often have you ran into syntax errors for system configuration files in Linux? I can't say that this has been much of an issue in my experience.
    - dwattttt 4y ago
      Start making raw edits directly to an ext4 disk rather than using published libs/APIs, and you'll soon find some new horrors to be scared about.
    - magicalhippo 4y ago
      That's because the article is about doing binary edits to to the registry files themselves, something no application or user should ever do. Instead changes should be done through the API or the regedit program.
josephg 4y ago
I mean, yeah - /etc is messy. Every configuration file in /etc has yet another bespoke configuration language. And somewhere on your system lies a corresponding buggy, half implemented parser for it. But /etc has gotten messy in the same way a desk gets messy. There's documents everywhere, but if you pick anything up and take a look at it, you can usually (with the help of google) figure out what that file does and how you can change it. It helps that almost every file in /etc is owned by a single program or library. And just about all of those programs have documentation. (Or, at worst, source code). In comparison, the windows registry feels like an old, disorganized community's storage space. On first glance things look organized, but actually there's been dozens of half hearted attempts to organize everything over the years by different people, each with their own idea of where everything should go. You don't recognise half the stuff in there. Random ex-employees have been dumping random objects in there for years. But its impossible to tell at a glance what random objects are critically important, and what is trash. Everyone else has this problem too, so nobody throws anything out, and its just accreted. Braver people than you have fallen on their swords trying to tame the windows registry. There be dragons. I'd take /etc over the windows registry any day of the week. /etc is messy at the surface level. The windows registry is messy like a fractal.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > . And just about all of those programs have documentation. (Or, at worst, source code). Having a documentation has nothing with reg/etc, win/nix or whatever. You have documentation for something in /etc? 99% that came from the distro packages.
Jedd 4y ago
> Some of these arguments are not really in good faith. First, this isn't a technical issue with the registry, but with how it's been used over the years and never "refactored" - a distinct issue. Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... I'd suggest that last bit is not uttered in good faith. 20+ years ago you could install the Microsoft Office suite on the Microsoft OS du jour and you'd find about 12k new registry entries. You could then uninstall that same Microsoft Office suite from your OS, and ... you'd find no decrease in the size of your registry. In the same epoch -- if you installed a hundred new applications on your Debian GNU/Linux OS, you may end up with several dozen new directory hierarchies under your /etc directory. If you then uninstalled those applications, the /etc/ entries would be gone. If they weren't, you'd file a report on the Debian BTS and that oversight would be resolved within a few months. For this reason I think it's disingenuous to claim running ls /etc/ is a mess that's equivalent, in any sense of the word, to the microsoft registry.
- vsareto 4y ago
  I'm sure MS has enough issues with backwards compatibility. Can't imagine handling multiple registry implementations on top of it.
- bzxcvbn 4y ago
  If your argument relies on how things were in late 90s - early 00s, I don't know if it's really worth anything today.
  - Jedd 4y ago
    That's probably a reasonable retort. My response was to the claims that we aren't addressing the technical issues with the registry -- that is, if Microsoft was unable/unwilling to handle registry hygiene, what hope the rest of us? I have not run the same test on a modern OS / Office install and uninstall, but at the risk of exposing my biases, I'm not hugely optimistic. Tangential aside - at the time I was working with a large Australian telco where we'd developed a SOE with robust roaming plus (effectively) package management for ~1500 desktop applications on a Microsoft Windows 3.x platform, all of which was largely kiboshed by the introduction of the registry. Secondly, I feel I've already addressed your 'at least it's not as bad as the /etc mess' by pointing out that /etc is not a mess on some, perhaps all, GNU/Linux distros with a good package management system. To paraphrase - if your argument relies on how slackware handled /etc in the late 90's, I don't know if that's worth anything today.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jeroenhd 4y ago

I love editing files in /etc ending in conf! Some are pseudo-INI (OpenSSL), some are pseudo-XML (Apache2 and friends), some are some kind of unholy amalgamation between C and YAML (nginx, dhcp daemons), others are some kind of TOML derivative (systemd, NetworkManager) and there's also some diet JSON in there! Netplan uses YAML, of course, though JSON will probably also parse. It's always a fun adventure to reverse engineer these file formats. Of course, most important files contain whitespace separated lines of configuration of which the meaning is only clear if you read the comments above it (cron, fstab, crypttab) or secretly bash scripts (GRUB config and many other files in /etc/default). Then there's user configuration stuff. Sure, HKLM vs HKCU is kind of weird, but the user configuration structure in the Linux home directory is an argument against intelligent design. ~/.config, ~/.programname, ~/.local or ~/snap/<name>/current/<randomfile>? Roll the dice and find out! You may be able to find the setting you're looking for in the DConf Editor but if you can't find it there, grep and prayer is your best bet. The Windows registry may be the result of a flawed execution, but I'll take it over the mess in Linux any day. Sadly, the registry has fallen out of fashion in Windows so now managing random configuration files somewhere in %USERPROFILE% (if you're lucky and the programmer hasn't hardcoded C:\Users\<username> as a path) just like on Linux. By the way, who needs the "hidden" FS flag anyway? Just start the filename with a period and pretend the ls-bug-dressed-up-as-a-feature for hiding files and folders is a standard every platform sticks to!

cycomanic 4y ago
> I love editing files in /etc ending in conf! Some are pseudo-INI (OpenSSL), some are pseudo-XML (Apache2 and friends), some are some kind of unholy amalgamation between C and YAML (nginx, dhcp daemons), others are some kind of TOML derivative (systemd, NetworkManager) and there's also some diet JSON in there! Netplan uses YAML, of course, though JSON will probably also parse. It's always a fun adventure to reverse engineer these file formats. Sure it would be great if all configuration was written in a single configuration format. Life would also be so much easier if there was only one ultimate programming language so we would only have to learn one. Unfortunately reality is messy and for a variety of reasons we have different formats. As a side note, I don't think I ever ran into a syntax error for a system configuration file, because I couldn't figure out the format. The first time that happened to me was when editing a yaml file for CI. > Of course, most important files contain whitespace separated lines of configuration of which the meaning is only clear if you read the comments above it (cron, fstab, crypttab) or secretly bash scripts (GRUB config and many other files in /etc/default). Well there is "man fstab", "man 5 cron" etc., so the file formats and options are formatted. However the complaint that the default files are so well commented that one understands what the different options are without actually reading the docs is just weird to me. How is that worse than some random registry key that is not documented anywhere without comments (they are not possible AFAIK) and without knowing what type they should take. > Then there's user configuration stuff. Sure, HKLM vs HKCU is kind of weird, but the user configuration structure in the Linux home directory is an argument against intelligent design. ~/.config, ~/.programname, ~/.local or ~/snap/<name>/current/<randomfile>? Which program saves configuration inside ~.local? I'm not aware of any and they generally should not. Also adding adding snap to that list is a bit besides the point, I don't think containers typically save their configuration in the registry either? > Roll the dice and find out! You may be able to find the setting you're looking for in the DConf Editor but if you can't find it there, grep and prayer is your best bet. I actually dislike that gnome uses dconf (which is a better organised registry), I think it would be better if they instead would have text files as well. I understand it's largely for performance reasons. > The Windows registry may be the result of a flawed execution, but I'll take it over the mess in Linux any day. So how do you know what registry keys to change to achieve a certain configuration (without documentation, because you didn't like that on Linux either)? > Sadly, the registry has fallen out of fashion in Windows so now managing random configuration files somewhere in %USERPROFILE% (if you're lucky and the programmer hasn't hardcoded C:\Users\<username> as a path) just like on Linux. By the way, who needs the "hidden" FS flag anyway? Just start the filename with a period and pretend the ls-bug-dressed-up-as-a-feature for hiding files and folders is a standard every platform sticks to!

lixtra 4y ago

> Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... In unix man my.conf will work for most sane programs.

OskarS 4y ago

> Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... In principle, sure. But in practice, using /etc to edit configuration data is not that hard, and every Linux user does it all the time. Different software uses different configuration formats, sure (though it's worth nothing that NixOS is doing really clever things to solve that problem), but it's really not that hard or scary. Manually editing the registry though... That way lies madness. It's much scarier and it's much more fragile.

izacus 4y ago
> Manually editing the registry though... That way lies madness. It's much scarier and it's much more fragile. How... exactly? There's no way to create a syntax error as trivial as you can in config files. How is using regedit or powershell commands more fragile (I understand "scarier" in a way everything you're not used to is scary).
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Well the article points to a way of preventing following entries to be read by having an entry in non alphabetical order. But how often have you ran into syntax errors for system configuration files in Linux? I can't say that this has been much of an issue in my experience.
  - dwattttt 4y ago
    Start making raw edits directly to an ext4 disk rather than using published libs/APIs, and you'll soon find some new horrors to be scared about.
  - magicalhippo 4y ago
    That's because the article is about doing binary edits to to the registry files themselves, something no application or user should ever do. Instead changes should be done through the API or the regedit program.

josephg 4y ago

I mean, yeah - /etc is messy. Every configuration file in /etc has yet another bespoke configuration language. And somewhere on your system lies a corresponding buggy, half implemented parser for it. But /etc has gotten messy in the same way a desk gets messy. There's documents everywhere, but if you pick anything up and take a look at it, you can usually (with the help of google) figure out what that file does and how you can change it. It helps that almost every file in /etc is owned by a single program or library. And just about all of those programs have documentation. (Or, at worst, source code). In comparison, the windows registry feels like an old, disorganized community's storage space. On first glance things look organized, but actually there's been dozens of half hearted attempts to organize everything over the years by different people, each with their own idea of where everything should go. You don't recognise half the stuff in there. Random ex-employees have been dumping random objects in there for years. But its impossible to tell at a glance what random objects are critically important, and what is trash. Everyone else has this problem too, so nobody throws anything out, and its just accreted. Braver people than you have fallen on their swords trying to tame the windows registry. There be dragons. I'd take /etc over the windows registry any day of the week. /etc is messy at the surface level. The windows registry is messy like a fractal.

justsomehnguy 4y ago
> . And just about all of those programs have documentation. (Or, at worst, source code). Having a documentation has nothing with reg/etc, win/nix or whatever. You have documentation for something in /etc? 99% that came from the distro packages.

Jedd 4y ago

> Some of these arguments are not really in good faith. First, this isn't a technical issue with the registry, but with how it's been used over the years and never "refactored" - a distinct issue. Second, I dare you to run "ls /etc" and claim it's not a mess... I'd suggest that last bit is not uttered in good faith. 20+ years ago you could install the Microsoft Office suite on the Microsoft OS du jour and you'd find about 12k new registry entries. You could then uninstall that same Microsoft Office suite from your OS, and ... you'd find no decrease in the size of your registry. In the same epoch -- if you installed a hundred new applications on your Debian GNU/Linux OS, you may end up with several dozen new directory hierarchies under your /etc directory. If you then uninstalled those applications, the /etc/ entries would be gone. If they weren't, you'd file a report on the Debian BTS and that oversight would be resolved within a few months. For this reason I think it's disingenuous to claim running ls /etc/ is a mess that's equivalent, in any sense of the word, to the microsoft registry.

vsareto 4y ago
I'm sure MS has enough issues with backwards compatibility. Can't imagine handling multiple registry implementations on top of it.
bzxcvbn 4y ago
If your argument relies on how things were in late 90s - early 00s, I don't know if it's really worth anything today.
- Jedd 4y ago
  That's probably a reasonable retort. My response was to the claims that we aren't addressing the technical issues with the registry -- that is, if Microsoft was unable/unwilling to handle registry hygiene, what hope the rest of us? I have not run the same test on a modern OS / Office install and uninstall, but at the risk of exposing my biases, I'm not hugely optimistic. Tangential aside - at the time I was working with a large Australian telco where we'd developed a SOE with robust roaming plus (effectively) package management for ~1500 desktop applications on a Microsoft Windows 3.x platform, all of which was largely kiboshed by the introduction of the registry. Secondly, I feel I've already addressed your 'at least it's not as bad as the /etc mess' by pointing out that /etc is not a mess on some, perhaps all, GNU/Linux distros with a good package management system. To paraphrase - if your argument relies on how slackware handled /etc in the late 90's, I don't know if that's worth anything today.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]