The CMOS memory in your PC is only used for BIOS settings. Mr. Gates and Windows doesn't save anything there (can you imagine if they did ? Oh My God !!!!) and neither does Linux.

The "registry" is a system database used by Windows and is stored as a file (or several files if I remember correctly) on your HD (somewhere in C:\Windows). The function of the registry is to ensure that a Windows system is as unreliable and unmaintainable as possible and to cause maximum user/administrator frustration as frequently as possible.

Look on it as a kind of "all your eggs in one basket" approach to system status and configuration storage. If anything untoward happens to the registry then you can use the wonderful GUI application called the "registry editor" to totally hose your system beyond any hope of repair. "The registry" also ensures that when you reinstall your OS, you have to reinstall and configure all your apps again as it is not easily restored from backup (I've tried this a few times in the past, each time without success). I don't know what possessed the engineers at Microsoft to come up with something so totally, completely, utterly, incredibly and massively stupid. Insanity ! Honestly, what a tw*t the guy who thought it up must have been. The registry is a software equivalent of a "Crime against humanity" IMHO.

Linux on the other hand has no "registry" as such (thank The Lord). Everything to do with setup and configuration is stored in these wonderfully high tech things called, for want of a better word, "text files". Each app has it's own configuration "text file" which can be edited with a special registry editor called a "text editor". In 90% of cases, if anything untoward happens to one of these text files then, it has no particular effect on your system whatsoever, only the app to which it applies. If you reinstall your OS and have made a backup of these "text files" then you can just copy them back to their original place and everything is hunky dory again. Also, if you cock up one of the configuration text files that does have an adverse effect on your system, you can even boot from a rescue floppy and use a "text editor" to repair the file and fix things again.

Linux, thankfully has to share nothing with Windows with the exception of the MBR record and partition tables on your HD. So don't worry about dual booting.

Sean.

Geoff Bagley <geoff@gcbagley.demon.co.uk>
05/31/2001 09:50 AM CET

To: suse-linux-e@suse.com
cc:
bcc:
Subject: [SLE] The Registry.

All our PCs have a "registry", usually in CMOS memory.

Our experience suggests that all sorts of horrid things may lurk there.
To Windows users it is kept a dark secret.

Does this range of memory appear anywhere in our LINUX file structure,
where would it be mounted, and what happens in a dual-boot system where
we have to share it with Bill Gates ?

Regards.
--
Geoff Bagley

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