On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:09, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The thing to ask yourself is "what is the concern on windows that > cleaning the register accomplishes, and is this an issue on Linux?". > I haven't run windows since 3.1 (pre-internet) so I don't know anything > about cleaning a registery so I don't know what threat you are trying to > mitigate.
He wants to clean the reg, because in Windows, any random program you install feels free to dump any entries it wants anywhere it feels like in the registry (kind of like how the Windows system tray grows dozens of icons if you are not careful). Eventually the sheer size of the reg can become a problem, and/or it is full of irrelevant entries from programs that where uninstalled or upgraded but that did not clean up after themselves. And of course deep in the reg is a favorite hiding place for malware. The closest equivalents of the reg in Linux are things like gconf, but it has far tighter controls on what goes in it, and ultimately it is probably less powerful and controlling than HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM) and HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU), and is nowhere near as powerful as HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Mucking about in the reg, especially HKR, can completely destroy your Windows install. Still, the reg offers many opportunities for fun. Nothing like doing a deep reg dive to manually remove tricky spyware - though it is probably better to just do a reinstall in those cases. The last time I had that much fun on Linux was when I was messing around with OpenLDAP and Kerberos. Before that it was trying to make a workable XFree86.conf file on some ancient version of Mandrake. Cheers, Kelly Clowers -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
