[TeMPOraL]

Don't see how this problem would be included in files. For every setting in the registry, there's a piece of software (and ultimately, a group of people behind it) that claims ownership to it, and determines the correct type for it.

File-based configs on Linux have the same problem anyway. The semantics of any config file you find are defined by the application that's consuming it. Any two config files that superficially seem to be using the same format, may in fact use a completely different one - and you'll never know, up until you edit one and it blows up in your face, because it cannot parse empty lines or #-comments, or escape characters, or negative values, or values larger than 2^16, or...

Whether altering Windows registry or a Linux config file, you cannot make a correct modification without knowing what the owners of the modified settings expect.

[rwmj]

For Linux guests we use Augeas which offers a consistent interface to all the /etc files: https://github.com/hercules-team/augeas

[TeMPOraL]

The description makes it look like it's a way of presenting Linux configs as something resembling Windows registry :).