From: John P. Looney (jplooney-ilug at domain online.ie)
Date: Wed 02 Feb 2000 - 12:46:18 GMT
On Wed, Feb 02, 2000 at 05:45:51AM -0600, John_White at domain dell.com mentioned:
> <snip>
> > Why do you need to do this, out of interest?
> yeah, . . . why?
>
> When trying to apply Windows concepts to UNIX which will just make it
> frustrating for yourself, embrace it's difference, treat it like a new
> fruit, don't constrain it within the bounds of something familliar - you
> lose something of it's richness.
> ("You must unlearn what you have learnt" - Master Yoda)
The idea of a registry is good. A single API for all apps to store their
stuff in. The Microsoft implementation wasn't too bad. It has it's
problems, but overall, it's functional.
It's the stupid programmers that abuse a registry that affect system
performance and stability. The outlook people thought it would be cunning
to store the calendar & mail addresses in it. The driver people thought it
would be cunning to store device settings in it.
Gnome people thought it would be cunning to store data in a registry.
Gnome-Pilot stores stuff like the addressbook details in it - as in, "The
addressbook file is in xxxx". Big difference.
> Hey why don't we keep the entire sytsem configuration in a centralised
> database that's loaded in memory all the time ? . . .
> That way, it'll use up memory, and give the user nothing in return. Also,
> the more software someone installs, the more memory it will take up, and the
> slower their system will run ! ! ! !
Do remember that it's swapped out when not in use...
> And when someone wants to copy an application from one system to
> another, they'll have to search all sorts of places in the registry to
> find other bits & components of the app.
You can export branches of a registry out, just like you can tar up the
filesystem. It's just not easy to do :)
If it was a common requirement, in an ideal world, applications would
have a "purge registry entries" menu thing, and a "export registry
settings" menu thing. They don't. With GNOME's registry, you can do "cp
-rd ~/.gnome/appname ~otheraccount/.gnome/appname - something I'd to do
yesterday, when copying settings from my home account to this one.
If anyone is doing anything, and thinks "I'd like a registry", checkout
out ACAP. It's supposed to be a "network registry". That would rock. If
all the linux apps you know any love become registry aware...esp. Vim, so
I could edit the registry with a text editor :)
Kate
-- Do you have a problem with American Mulitnationals forcing the arrest of a Norwegian 16 year old, because he made them look like fools by cracking DVD encryption, so he could play his own DVDs, and then sharing his DVD player ? Sign the petition: http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/protesteng.php
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