On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:58:08 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>> But the critical question is... Can you configure them all from the
>>> GUI? Or do you have to edit some 25-mile text file?
>> 
>> No more often than Windows settings need to be tweaked in the registry
>> these days, in my experience.
> 
> Generally, you only need to tweak the registry for very obscure settings
> that almost nobody will ever need to touch.

I find that to be the same on my GNOME desktop systems.

> Unix software, on the other hand, seems to regard giant text files (all
> with a completely different format) as the *primary* means of
> configuration, and a GUI as secondary to that.

Let me introduce you to YaST....Before I started using it, I didn't like 
the idea of it, but now that I'm used to it, guess what - I don't have to 
tweak all these different configuration files, because it handles it for 
me most of the time.

> Windows software tends to regard the GUI as the primary way to
> configure. And if there isn't a button for it, it's probably just not
> editable at all.

It's editable if you know how.

> And look at Mozilla Firefox. There's an options box, but there are
> seemingly millions of extra config entries that aren't listed there.
> (They do at least provide a reasonable UI for editing these...)

Yeah, that's what about:config is for....

Jim

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