> I love editing files in /etc ending in conf! Some are pseudo-INI (OpenSSL), some are pseudo-XML (Apache2 and friends), some are some kind of unholy amalgamation between C and YAML (nginx, dhcp daemons), others are some kind of TOML derivative (systemd, NetworkManager) and there's also some diet JSON in there! Netplan uses YAML, of course, though JSON will probably also parse. It's always a fun adventure to reverse engineer these file formats.
Sure it would be great if all configuration was written in a single configuration format. Life would also be so much easier if there was only one ultimate programming language so we would only have to learn one. Unfortunately reality is messy and for a variety of reasons we have different formats.
As a side note, I don't think I ever ran into a syntax error for a system configuration file, because I couldn't figure out the format. The first time that happened to me was when editing a yaml file for CI.
> Of course, most important files contain whitespace separated lines of configuration of which the meaning is only clear if you read the comments above it (cron, fstab, crypttab) or secretly bash scripts (GRUB config and many other files in /etc/default).
Well there is "man fstab", "man 5 cron" etc., so the file formats and options are formatted. However the complaint that the default files are so well commented that one understands what the different options are without actually reading the docs is just weird to me. How is that worse than some random registry key that is not documented anywhere without comments (they are not possible AFAIK) and without knowing what type they should take.
> Then there's user configuration stuff. Sure, HKLM vs HKCU is kind of weird, but the user configuration structure in the Linux home directory is an argument against intelligent design. ~/.config, ~/.programname, ~/.local or ~/snap//current/?
Which program saves configuration inside ~.local? I'm not aware of any and they generally should not. Also adding adding snap to that list is a bit besides the point, I don't think containers typically save their configuration in the registry either?
> Roll the dice and find out! You may be able to find the setting you're looking for in the DConf Editor but if you can't find it there, grep and prayer is your best bet.
I actually dislike that gnome uses dconf (which is a better organised registry), I think it would be better if they instead would have text files as well. I understand it's largely for performance reasons.
> The Windows registry may be the result of a flawed execution, but I'll take it over the mess in Linux any day.
So how do you know what registry keys to change to achieve a certain configuration (without documentation, because you didn't like that on Linux either)?
> Sadly, the registry has fallen out of fashion in Windows so now managing random configuration files somewhere in %USERPROFILE% (if you're lucky and the programmer hasn't hardcoded C:\Users\ as a path) just like on Linux. By the way, who needs the "hidden" FS flag anyway? Just start the filename with a period and pretend the ls-bug-dressed-up-as-a-feature for hiding files and folders is a standard every platform sticks to!