> Now if you take a look at a different operating system like Linux it has no such thing as the registry. There's no global configuration store. There's no common schema. Every app has its own configuration that it carries with it and the system has its own configuration that it has and these are represented as flat files with text.

Linux (Gnome) has dconf [0] [1] [2], which is essentially the same thing (but mostly only used by various GUI apps, and not low-level system components like on Windows).

[0]: https://askubuntu.com/a/191013

[1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/dconf

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dconf

I remember when Windows had *.INI files to store program settings in.

I also remember people deleting their registry.dat file in Windows 95 because it was too big. If they backed up to tape, they could restore it; if not, Windows 95 was screwed.