What we need is someone to write a daemon that monitors rc.conf for changes and then write them to the appropriate configuration file. Also the opposite needs monitored, so when the separate configurations files are changed (probably by GUI stuff), the changes are made back to rc.conf. (That was not a serious idea...) While I do still like the idea of a single system configuration file, it is down the list of reasons I pick Arch. I also see why it is becoming more difficult to support, with various efforts to standardize the configuration of these standard system properties across distros so that nice GUIs can edit them... Following the use of these more standard configuration files instead of having broken behaviour in software that tries to edit them, or having to patch the software to work with Arch does seem the more Arch like approach to me. I think Tom has done a good job in documenting the best practise and also supporting the old syntax (which is not "broken" in any way, but limited...). I have not moved to using the separate configuration files (and probably will not until we officially move to systemd or I do a new install) and everything seems to work. Allan