using terminal (was [HM] Re: OS 9 System folder)

[Duane Murphy]

--- At Fri, 6 Jun 2003 11:19:13 -0400, Mary C. Youra wrote:

>
>On Friday, June 6, 2003, at 08:15  AM, Duane Murphy wrote:
>
>> --- At Thu, 5 Jun 2003 17:33:37 -0500, Wendy Townley wrote:
>>
>>> I want to remove OS 9 because I never use it. This is my second Mac
>>> with OS X (my previous was an iBook) and I NEVER booted into 9. 
>>> There's
>>> no reason for me to.
>>>
>>> So, any ideas?
>>
>> Removing OS 9 is not about "booting" into OS 9. Its about running 
>> classic
>> applications. If you remove OS 9 you cannot run applications that have
>> not been ported to OS X while in OS X.
>> <snip>
>> A suggestion would be to use Drop Stuff to make a stuffit archive of 
>> your
>> OS 9 folder and then delete the folder. Run for a while like that, if 
>> you
>> dont have problems after a year or so ;-) you can delete the archive.
>
>This is a reasonable suggestion, Wendy. Like you, I don't boot into OS 
>9, either. But, unless you really need the hard drive space AND are 
>proficient or comfortable with Terminal, keeping 9 around may prove 
>useful. Sooner or later, you may need to get rid of a folder with a 
>permissions problem or something similar. Booting into 9 to take care 
>of it is a whole lot less intimidating for me than using Terminal 
>commands. (Please, no lectures. True, I should probably learn Terminal, 
>but it scares me to death.) At the very least, have Disk Warrior 3 or 
>some other bootable disk before you trash 9.

I'm probably going to get a ration of ^%(*& from others, but you _should_
be afraid of the terminal. The fact that the current ration of tips and
tricks and fixes for Mac OS X often involve the terminal is horrible and
degrading. 

The Macintosh prided itself on a solid graphical user interface. If I
have to resort to a command line to fix things then the OS is clearly
broken! End of story.

Keep in mind that I am professional Macintosh programmer. I use the
terminal every day on a regular basis. It doesnt frighten me one bit, but
I have been doing this for many years. But I do not trust my kids or my
mother to use the terminal.

However, this is a good reason to keep OS 9 around. It was much easier to
fix things in 9 because it was more solid an people worked out this problems.

 ...Duane