dconf is an open source, simple, easy-to-use and free key-based and low-level configuration system designed as a backend to GSettings. It can be used on platforms that do not have a configuration storage system and can be described as an equivalent to the Registry Editor tool from Microsoft Windows operating systems, but designed for the GNOME graphical desktop environment.
Features at a glance
The project is a key/value storage system, which has been greatly optimized for reading, making it ideal for storing user preferences under the GNOME desktop environment. It supports change notifications, mandatory keys, as well as stacking of multiple configuration sources.
It will allow you to change both hidden or visible settings for the GNOME desktop environment, for various graphical applications that are distributed as part of the GNOME project, for third-party apps, as well as for other internal components of the GNOME session.
Getting started with dconf
The best way to install dconf on your GNOME-based GNU/Linux distribution is to use the pre-built binary packages from the main software repositories of your operating system. Of course, a universal sources archive is also available for download for users who want to optimize the program for a specific hardware architecture and Linux distro.
If you decide to install the application from the source tarball (tar.xz file), which is distributed for free on Softpedia, than download it and save it locally, extract its contents, open a terminal emulator and use the ‘cd’ command to navigate to the location of the extracted archive files.
Execute the ‘./configure && make’ command to configure/optimize the program, as well as to compile it. Then, run the ‘make install’ command as root or with sudo to install it system wide. Both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms are supported at this time.
