All the programs use their own configuration files. The bad part is that the files have different syntax. This is stupid. Let’s assume one favored multiple files, one or several per application. I’m neutral about this. This could be OK if only they had the same syntax. I would expect one library to be used across all applications to read and write the configurations.

If I understand correctly, Gnome is trying to solve this by using a library. But looking at ~/.gconf/apps I saw big FAIL: it’s XML based.
One could argue about the XML but I’m all anti-XML. You could search the internet for “XML sucks” about that. Maybe I’ll post about that later.
Anyhow the fact that Gnome is doing it differently and not “The UNIX way” just highlights the problem.

Looking at the one-big-stupid-file-to-rule-them-all solution also known as Registry makes it clear that this implementation is plain and simple a failure. So it’s probably not it. Not the way it was implemented anyway.

Just to make clear, I’m not sure what the correct solution is. I just know the solutions I’m aware of suck.