The Case for Gconf

While not hating GConf quiote as much as the OP, I sympathize with his point of view.

I should say that what really bugs me about it is the history. If people had been starting from scratch, needed a config file standard for a Windows-like GUI, and designed gconf, that wouldn't be so bad. It would still not be a good configuration file system, but it would be excusable.

But that's not what happened. X11 had a standard for resource and configuration data, a standard that wasn't perfect, but also had a lot going for it, and that took into account the special requirements of a network transparent window system.

Gnome just arbitrarily broke with that standard and came up with something incompatible and less functional. And KDE did its own thing and came up with another incompatible system. And all these articles that talk about how great systems like gconf are never even bother to justify clearly why they believe it was necessary to break with the existing system; they don't even seem to understand the issues involved.

That kind of attitude is found in other areas of Gnome and KDE development as well (key bindings, cut-and-paste, window management, etc.). It's no wonder people complain about X11 being inconsistent if developers don't use the standards that are there, and Gnome and KDE are the primary guilty parties in making X11 inconsistent. Both Gnome and KDE seem more concerned with being like Windows than with being consistent and native X11 GUIs. And that's a shame, because there is also a lot of good work going into both projects.