OSNews

"My criticism is that we configuration files
all over the place....../etc/app/config

/etc/config"

Is a global configuration file belonging to the OS itself. Other examples:

/etc/hosts
/etc/rc.conf
/etc/ppp/ppp.conf

"/local/etc/conifig"

Should be:

/usr/local/etc/config

which is a global configuration file of an application that has been installed by the OS's default package installation system (or compiled from source). It may configure an additional service or be a set of default settings a user may override using his $HOME/.config. Other examples:

/usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf
/usr/local/etc/ddclient.conf
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/smartd.sh

"I remember trying to get the config file
for xdm the X server because I wanted to add
window managers to it. I coud not find out how it was
done and the list maintainer of the distro
was stumped too."

I think the X configuration file does not contain any window managers... Refering to Xorg, xog.conf is stored in /usr/X11R6/etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Window managers are added to the users default .xinitrc ($HOME/.xinitrc) or to the skeleton templates (/usr/share/skel/dot.xinitrc).

"In many cases it is distro specific and arbitrary.
And YES I am an ordinary user but a hacker too."

Yes, it is distro-specific in most cases, and while Xorg is in heavy development (modularity, automatition etc.), locations may change.

"Unix file heiarchy could be more logical though overall it is not bad"

I agree here. It would be great to have some consense in UNIX and Linux world, so location schemata between Solaris, BSD, Mandriva, Gentoo, SuSE etc. could be (nearly) the same.