GIMP stores its user configuration directory, .gimp, in a non-standard location on Windows.  Currently GIMP places this in the location specified by the %USERPROFILE% environment variable, which is incorrect.  Also, GIMP prefaces the directory name with a ".", which is meaningless in a Windows environment.  On Windows, this only serves to cause the directory to stick out at the top of the file list in an inappropriate location, rather than be nicely unobtrusive as it would be on a Unixy system.  The opposite of what seems to be intended.

In order to put the directory in an unobtrusive place, as the period in the filename accomplishes in Unixy systems, the directory should be located in one of the locations especially set aside for this type of configuration data. Since Windows 2000 (and earlier on the Windows NT side of the house), the correct location to store application configuration data is found in the following environment variables:

- For per-installation data: %ProgramData%
- For roaming persistent per-user configuration data: %APPDATA%
- For non-roaming persistent per-user data: %LOCALAPPDATA%
- For temporary non-persistent data: %TMP%