Chapter 3. GSettings and dconf

As mentioned above, the GConf configuration system has been replaced by two systems:

Both the gsettings command-line tool and the dconf utility are used to view and change user settings. The gsettings utility does so directly in the terminal, while the dconf utility uses the dconf-editor GUI for editing a configuration database. See Chapter 9, Configuring Desktop with GSettings and dconf for more information on dconf-editor and the gsettings utility.

The gconftool-2 tool has been replaced by gsettings and dconf. Likewise, gconf-editor has been replaced by dconf-editor.

The concept of keyfiles has been introduced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7: the dconf utility allows the system administrator to override the default settings by directly installing defaults overrides. For example, setting the default background for all users is now executed by using a dconf override placed in a keyfile in the keyfile directory, such as /etc/dconf/db/local.d/). To learn more about default values and overriding, see Section 9.5, “Configuring Custom Default Values”.

The dconf system now allows individual settings or entire settings subpaths to be locked down to prevent user customization. For more information on how to lock settings, see Section 9.5.1, “Locking Down Specific Settings”.

Using the dconf utility on home directories shared over NFS requires additional configuration. See Section 9.7, “Storing User Settings Over NFS” for information on this topic.