The GNOME System Tools are a set of cross-platform
configuration utilities for Linux and other Unix
systems. Internally they are divided in frontends
and backends. The frontend knows nothing about the
underlying system and provides the same user
interface across the different types of systems.
The backend knows how to read and write the
configuration information. The GNOME System Tools
do not impose a new database on the system: they
work with the default configuration files so that
configuration can still be done by hand or by
other tools.