GConf is a configuration database system, functionally similar to the
Windows registry but lots better. It was written for the GNOME
desktop but does not require GNOME; configure should notice if GNOME
is not installed and compile the basic GConf library anyway.

There's an introductory article at
http://developer.gnome.org/feature/current/index.html, written a while
ago but mostly still valid.  Also, there's a mailing list
gconf-list@gnome.org, see
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gconf-list