The System Tools Backends (s-t-b for short) are a set of cross-platform modules for Linux, FreeBSD and other Unix systems. The backends provide an common DBus interface to all platforms to modify or read the system configuration in a distro independent fashion. Historically, access to system configuration has varied deeply across Unix flavours, and concreting a bit more, across Linux distributions, making it near impossible to write desktop tools that could work flawlessly in a cross-platform way. System Tools Backends try to fill this gap, offering a generic and easy way for desktop applications to read and modify configuration details.

Right now the System Tools Backends fully support various distros/OS such as: Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, Fedora, Debian (and derivations like Ubuntu, Linex, Guadalinex...), Gentoo, Slackware, FreeBSD, Solaris, ...