[klauserc]

Oh my! That's an amazing list. I used to perform many of these changes by hand on every new windows installation. It's such a slog.

And while some of my systems now run linux, as the post says: "Sometimes using Windows is inevitable."

In defense of the much maligned Windows registry, I'll say: isn't it amazing that you can make such a wide array of changes via a single tool (regedit)? If you had to automate such changes on Linux, you would probably need a whole suite of tools. In some cases, you'd write a file into a `.d` directory. In other cases, you can `echo '...' >> subsystem.cfg`. In yet other cases, you'll need `sed -i`. Maybe `awk` gets the job done where `sed` is too simple. Maybe there are more complex cases, where you'd need the power of `perl` (or python or ...) to make the edit. And some subsystems come with their own suite of manipulation tools (ZFS, systemd, etc.) where editing text files would be the more difficult option.

[Filligree]

> In defense of the much maligned Windows registry, I'll say: isn't it amazing that you can make such a wide array of changes via a single tool (regedit)? If you had to automate such changes on Linux, you would probably need a whole suite of tools.

Or NixOS, in which case it's a single file you have to load. :)

[Squarex]

Well yes and no. Windows registry almost always become unmantainable mess.

For simple dotfiles there are plenty tools to manage them on linux [0].

For more complex scenarios with multiple tools there is NixOS which can manage everything. [1]

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dotfiles [1] https://nixos.org

[RiverCrochet]

> isn't it amazing that you can make such a wide array of changes via a single tool (regedit)?

I mean with a basic text editor you can completely configure and control most Linux systems, and even add comments in the files to track changes or provide help where you need it. Many UNIX/Linux apps where automating settings would matter have the ability to have smaller config files that override main config files.

> If you had to automate such changes on Linux, you would probably need a whole suite of tools.

So this is because basic utility applications in Linux tend to be more independent of Linux as an operating system. I cannot remove Explorer, OneDrive, Windows Defender and a bunch of other stuff from Windows that isn't really actually Windows itself without other stuff breaking or worrying about what M$ will do on the next update. It's all weirdly and forcibly integrated, whereas in Linux, for example maybe nautilus has it's own config files in its own places, but if I want to remove it and use rox-filer or something else, it will be possible. And Linux minds its own business with antivirus and does not force me to send files to a third party for review at any time unless I want to.

We do have convergence happening around systemd so you may still get what you want here (systemd-confregistryd?).

> where editing text files would be the more difficult option

Sifting through rows and rows of CLSID GUIDs for file extensions just to change programs associated with file extensions is much more unpleasant.