what would windows be like without the registry?

[elxr06]

i wonder if it would help if microsoft got rid of the windows registry in future O.S. releases? Linux and MacOSX don't use them and they seem to be ok.

I read some people saying that Microsoft's windows still waded in "DLL *censored*" or "registry *censored*" (sorry for using the word *censored* here)

[dairyman]

Neither good or bad.

It would be good if they got rid of the registry because some uninstallers forget to remove the registry keys. And if you go into regedit and accidentally delete something important, you'll have to reinstall Windows.

But it would be bad because Windows uses the registry to store your settings, and if instead of using the registry they would use files and put them in the WINDOWS folder, someone could just come along and delete the files, whereas somebody without any knowledge with editing the registry wouldn't be able to do this at all.