Note: Shift-Q does not close Adium windows. It does, however, close vi.

Today a OS 9.2.2 machine I was (supposed) to use today decided it didn't want to start up. After I zapped the PRAM (twice), I got the Happy Mac icon... but it didn't go away. It stayed on the screen.

I restarted, booted off the CD, and tried to reinstall the system. Except I only have a 9.2.1 disk, not a 9.2.2 disk. So, it won't let me install unless I do a clean install.. which, since the machine wasn't mine, and I know there's a lot of custom extensions, control panels, and fonts, I wasn't willing to mess with.

So I got thinking that wouldn't it be nice to just be able to easily reinstall an OS X system (even if it's a version higher than the disks you have.. ala having to reinstall 10.3 on a 10.3.4 machine) - to reinstall an OS X system while keeping all the user's custom applications and such.

Then I realized there is a way - install everything in ~/. Now, I haven't installed OS X on a system in a while, so it could be that the contents of the /Applications folder is preserved, but I know the contents of ~/Applications is. I'm also not sure if the contents of /Library is kept around or not either (but again, I know ~/Library is.

However, Apple has said that, while /System/Library is theirs, I don't remember them saying anything about /Applications or /Library is. Yet, installing your own custom software in ~/Applications guarantee that it won't be touched... as well as making your OS X system very easy to backup (just backup your home directory!)

This approach creates two problems, however:

• Novice users

  For a novice user this might be annoying. They go to find an application, don't find it in one spot, then realize that, oh yeah, it's in the other spot. On the other hand, one could hope that a novice user has all their applications nicely arranged on the dock for them.

• Situations where more than one user owns a machine (but does common tasks)

  If everybody in your family (or work environment) uses Photoshop on your machine, it's a waste of space to install it once for every user

Putting everything in ~/ gives you the following advantages though:

• Portability

  With everything in ~/ it's very easy to take your complete environment with you - just copy your home folder across the network, or onto a firewire drive, and sit down. Everything should be ready to go for you.

• Ease of Backup

  I already mentioned this (and it sort of goes with Portability), but if you're entire environment is in one place then it's easy to back up that environment.

• Upgrades are less scary (and less hunting through archives)

  An Archive and Install from the OS X installer puts all of your old stuff into a disk image so you can go and grab items as you need. This means that right after an upgrade you for a few days you're going into that archive every once and a while it retrieve something. With everything in your (untouched) user directory, there's no hunting (since nothing moved)

OS X (may be) easier when you learn to that you can place files anywhere you want, as long as it's in your home holder