I am looking at creating some Ubuntu applications, but finding good resoures are hard.

I am using the quickly toolkit, but would really like some more insight. How does one normally store application preferences and settings in Linux / Ubuntu.

Is it as simple as creating a XML file and saving the information and then reading from said file on application bootstrap?

If someone can point me in a direction it would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT

This is something I wrote whilst waiting for a reply. Probably exactly what preferences does, but just coded out. You might find it usefull:

import ConfigParser, os # We need to be able to store and recal settings



#first try to read the config.cfg file

config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()

configFile = 'data/config.cfg'



# We need to set some defaults

monState = False

tueState = False

wedState = False

thurState = False

friState = False

satState = False

sunState = False



# Creating the Config file

def createConfigFile(fileName):

    print "CREATING CONFIG" # not needed, but nice for debugging

    config.add_section('Preferences')

    config.set('Preferences', 'mon', False)

    config.set('Preferences', 'tues', False)

    config.set('Preferences', 'wed', False)

    config.set('Preferences', 'thur', False)

    config.set('Preferences', 'fri', False)

    config.set('Preferences', 'sat', False)

    config.set('Preferences', 'sun', False)

    rewriteConfigFile(filename)



# After reading the config file, we can update configs in memory. 

# But this will save it to file for when the application is started up again. 

def rewriteConfigFile(filename):    

    with open(filename, 'wb') as configfile:

        config.write(configfile)



# Reading the config file 

def readConfigFile(fileName):

    print "READING CONFIG"  # not needed, but nice for debugging

    global monState, tueState, wedState, thurState, friState, satState, sunState

    monState = config.getboolean('Preferences', 'mon')

    tueState = config.getboolean('Preferences', 'tues')

    wedState = config.getboolean('Preferences', 'wed')

    thurState = config.getboolean('Preferences', 'thur')

    friState = config.getboolean('Preferences', 'fri')

    satState = config.getboolean('Preferences', 'sat')

    sunState = config.getboolean('Preferences', 'sun')



# If the config does not exist, create it, then read it. Otherwise simply read it

if not config.read(configFile):    

    createConfigFile(configFile)

    readConfigFile(configFile)    

else:

    readConfigFile(configFile)