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The action of modifying a program's behavior, generally by modifying a text file.

How to configure a program

Traditionally, there are 3 ways of configuring the behavior of a program:

  1. System wide configuration files
  2. User specific configuration files
  3. Compiling options

A few conventions about configuration files:

  • Configuration is stored in text files (as opposed to binaries or anything similar to the Windows registry).
  • System wide configuration files are located in /etc.
  • User specific configuration files are located in the user's home directory.
  • Configuration files have names ending with the suffix rc. Example: /etc/vimrc.
  • User specific configuration files are hidden by prefixing them with a dot (.). Example: ~/.bashrc.
  • Compiling options are only available at compile time and cannot be changed afterwards. On systems using binary package management, the package maintainer is in charge of selecting the appropriate options.

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