> 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 confi

> 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. What do you mean? You are mixing multiple things, most of var and lib are also only root writable (unless tied to a specific user). For GUI application you generally end up with a system where etc holds the system defaults and user configuration is in $XDG_USER_CONFIG which defaults to $HOME/.config. This is the case for the vast majority (>90%) of GUI applications. If we're are talking state, that typically ends up $HOME/.cache (if it should be temporary) or $HOME/.local/var (if it should be persistent). There are also XDG variables for these but I forgot them at the moment. So can you elaborate what you mean with your perceived problem?