Re: As soon as Windows 7 support finishes
You have per key ACLs and auditing, you have atomic transaction commits with rollback and snapshot capability and above all it's a single interface, a single location and a standard format for all configuration data. Windows stopped using crappy solutions like INI files many years ago - Linux has yet to catch up.
The registry was a Windows 3.1 solution to there being no defined hierarchy of directories to hold application settings, so it had to be centralised because otherwise developers would put files anywhere and nothing could stop them (unlike UNIX).
Registry keys are equivalent to files, which can also have ACLs and auditing. Most configuration files are stored in the user's home directory meaning the settings are private to that user without doing anything.
In UNIX if you want to copy a program across from one comouter to another it's easy to install the same program from the repository and copy the configuration file/directory across. Try that in Windows.
Commit and rollback are necessary because it's centralised, and that still isn't good enough as registry corruption and registry cleaners are things in Windows.
If there is a corrupt configuration file in UNIX you just wipe it or restore from backup and carry on with your day. Try the same on a Windows machine with a hosed registry.
Finally the registry is legacy. MS now recommends %APPDATA% is used for desktop software settings and it isn't used in TIFKAM app settings.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
