Gconf, Dconf, Gsettings and the relationship between them

Dconf is a data store designed for storing configuration. It is the replacement for Gconf, which was used for the same purpose. Eventually, no programs should depend on Gconf any more.

Gsettings is a development library used to read and write to a configuration store backend. On Linux, it uses Dconf, but on Windows, it uses the registry, and on OS X, it uses a native data store. (The gsettings command on the CLI uses this library.)

Application developers and end-users are recommended to use Gsettings, not Dconf directly.

See also:

• What are the differences between gconf and dconf?
• Can I use dconf-editor to modify Gconf settings?
• GSettingsMigration on gnome.org

GConf is obsolete. It is the older GNOME 2.x configuration API and system, and has been replaced by DConf/GSettings in newer versions. However, some applications still use it.

GSettings is a GLib implementation of DConf, which stores its data in a binary database.

The gsettings command line tool is simply a tool to access or modify settings via the GSettings API, in the same way that the older gconftool command line tool is for GConf.