> I can’t and shouldn’t be able to write to /etc as an ordinary or guest user.

You're right, you shouldn't. If you are able to, your distro is very odd and I'd recommend seeking a new one.

> Sounds like you’re just one of many anti-windows people, exactly what was pointed out about people bashing the registry.

There's no need to attack people.

This is emphatically NOT true.

If you absolutely could not write to /etc, then you would never be able to change your password.

The passwd, chsh, chfn, and other utilities allow a non-privileged user to make controlled changes to privileged files via the setuid/gid system calls.

A user can trigger controlled writes to files in /etc.

> If you absolutely could not write to /etc, then you would never be able to change your password.

Since we're talking about Linux, I would refrain from using absolute clauses like "never".

systemd-homed allows you to create "portable" user profiles which contain everything pertaining to a particular user, including his password. So user profiles (including your files, etc) can be moved between computers simply by rsync'ing that directory, or putting it on a network share.

`homectl passwd` (which changes a portable user's password) does not require writable /etc.

I think I've seen a few other solutions like that.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-homed

https://systemd.io/HOME_DIRECTORY/

Users can not write to /etc, those programs like passwd can because they have the suid bit on and run as root regardless of which user initiated the process.

It's more so that users can ask the administrator to write to `/etc/` for them.

The administrator in this case has an automated tool that handles this requæst but the actual user the writing occurs under is the root user.

That's like saying you've broken RSA because you can cause controlled reads. All you have to do is send the encrypted message to the intended recipient and wait for them to decrypt it.

That's being a bit pedantic innit?

Maybe in OPs opinion, using `passwd` to write to `/etc/passwd` is not the same thing as using the registry API to write to the registry?

Personally, I feel it is the same thing.

> I can’t and shouldn’t be able to write to /etc as an ordinary or guest user

I don't believe you can. What distribution is this?

Point about /etc is that it’s just one part of “configuration”.

There’s no /etc for users. That’s why we get all these dot.dirs. At least some apps use ~/.config/

"$XDG_CONFIG_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user-specific configuration files should be stored. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.config should be used."

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-...

.config/ and .local/ are the de facto /etc for users, but there is the set of XDG_ environment variables that are intended to fill that role.

Well, my git, ssh, caches of what not, almost everything is in my home directory directly. It's even worse than "My Documents"

Git uses XDG_CONFIG_HOME https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Files - putting the config directly in your home is just a choice.

It doesn’t in macOS.

It’s not a choice. It’s the default. It’s like saying it’s a choice to run mongodb without authentication.

Lastly, why should I be using XDG Desktop variables on something that don’t haveA desktop environment?

„My Documents” isn’t the same as a home directory. Home directory in recent Windows versions is „C:\Users\CurrentUserName”. Or better: %homedrive%%homepath%.

I'm pretty sure .local is the per-user /usr, and .config is /etc

You’re both correct; a fair number of applications put their configuration in ~/.local/share even though that wasn’t the intent.