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Ken , lighten up a touch. I don't ever telling a stranger to shut the f*ck up, it isn't going to win any arguements.

1 ) We are seeing an evolution to something better than the registry or text files - XML specifications for configuration. Force users to use a validating parser in their editor and you get a lot fewer mistakes. Couple this with some tools to validate the imputs & compare your config with a database of know errors & you will have a great system.

2) If you ever hose your regisitry, you are basically dead. Time to blow a day reinstalling the OS and getting all the apps etc reinstalled. Any you will reboot about a dozen times before you get the updates (The MS update site is on my 'Favorites List'). I assume the need to reboot after installs will continue to improve with time - after all MS can approriate more than TCP stacks from the BSD's.

2a) I will agree that screwing up config files in *nix can also leave you with a dead box, but its relativelyeasy to copy in new text files. (You can go to the command line & reload some keys in the registry, but that is more involved that copying files.)

2b) Why on earth should application configuration be in the same 'thing' (the registry file) as system configuration? Sure they are under different keys, but you can't 'accidentally' damage rc.conf when you are editing httpd.conf

3) You can bet that the configuration of a fairly complex app is spread all over the registry. Each COM compenent & COM interface has a key in there somewhere. Searching the registry is (for some reason I really don't understand) much slower than 'exploratory grepping'.

4) You noted that the config files don't always end up in the same place. This is mostly an issue of figuring out how your flavor of Unix works. For me, this is why I am really starting to like the BSD's. All of the ports/packages are installed under /usr. Still, it is surprising when files end up in strange directories.

5) IMO, Microsoft moved away from ini files becuase they were an admin's nightmare. Users can (and did) edit them & occasionally, they screwed up an app. With newer Windows (and of course any *nix), you can lock down files as well as the registry. Text files were almost TOO easy to use. If you get *nix-heads that can use Unix text proccessing tools, it is very clear that text fliles are much more flexible.

6) GUIs (and CLI applications) are good for configuration. I agree that you should not have to open config files in you favorite text editor (which I assume is not vi). But, its just as easy to have the GUI (Wizard or otherwise) modify a text file or the registry. KDE has a bunch of Windows-like interfaces to handle many common configuration tasks.

One of the great insights of Unix is that everything can be treated as a file. (/dev and /proc don't really contail 'files', but you can treat them like the contents 'just like' files & directories on a drive.) All text files can be manipulated with common tools. I don't think the *nix comminities would ever want a registry-like configuration.