[Ilgaz]

All of these tricks except languages to some extents is really dangerous to be applied to a sandbox/binary signing OS.
Computerworld is a Windows focused mag, I can understand their "windows" way of thinking but OS X is a completely different OS with a completely different filesystem. None of the tricks makes any sense and if sandbox gets hardened in future Leopard updates, many of people applying such "delete ppc/intel binary" tricks may end up with a non functioning operating system.
Having 1 language or 100 languages has no difference in eye of OS X. Same goes for universal binaries. They don't effect any kind of performance at all because your system doesn't really care if they are there or not.
Also as the OS X updates becomes bigger all the time and people flaming Apple for it, Apple can do "patching" in the future which expects at least the binaries are there.
Trust me, leave your system alone. Saying as a person having quad g5, g4 Mini and G4 powerbook. None of these tricks made any difference in the past and they are absolutely dangerous on sandboxed/app signed leopard.

[snej]

Ilgaz said:

All of these tricks except languages to some extents is really dangerous to be applied to a sandbox/binary signing OS.

It is safe to remove languages. After all, the OS installer itself does this, if you use the advanced settings to customize the set of languages to install. Here's proof showing that removing the Danish localization from Mail doesn't break its signature, while adding some arbitrary file does:

$ codesign -vv Mail.app
Mail.app: valid on disk
$ mv Mail.app/Contents/Resources/da.lproj /tmp/
$ codesign -vv Mail.app
Mail.app: valid on disk
$ touch Mail.app/Contents/Resources/foooooo
$ codesign -vv Mail.app
Mail.app: a sealed resource is missing or invalid
/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources/foooooo: resource added

I am not sure whether it's safe to remove x86 or PPC binaries; but I believe it is, since again the installer can control which binaries get installed.

[bynkii]

[quote name='snej']
>

Ilgaz said:

> All of these tricks except languages to some extents is really dangerous to be applied to a sandbox/binary signing OS.

It is safe to remove languages. After all, the OS installer itself does this, if you use the advanced settings to customize the set of languages to install. Here's proof showing that removing the Danish localization from Mail doesn't break its signature, while adding some arbitrary file does:

Regardless, the performance increase will be minimal at best, unless you have no drive space left.

[hillstones]

bigpoppa said:

Be careful of step one! If you go to upgrade Microsoft Office, it will complain about not finding a valid install when you remove those extra languages and you'll be forced to re-install the whole thing in order to add the update.

I have never had any problems updating Office 2004 after the useless languages have been stripped from the program.

[hillstones]

spacest said:

some of these tricks are very dangerous. 99% of the mac problems are due to tweaking the os. basic rule: leave os x alone

None of these tips involve "tweaking" OS X. It is simply removing files that are not needed. None of the tips referenced in the article involve modifying the OS X System or Library folder.

The major problem you would encounter is if you accidently deleted the US English language. This would require OS X to be reinstalled. There is nothing wrong with deleting language files that are not used.

When you install OS X and choose your language, the installer should only install that language. I don't know of anyone that randomly changes the language on their computer. Most use their native language. So if I choose English, only the English language should be installed.

Another big space saving tip is during the OS X install itself. Choose Customize and DESELECT the Printer options, and all other Foreign Language and Font options. This will save you about 3 GB of space. Since most people only use one printer, you can save a few GB's of space by installing only the printer driver that you use.

[hillstones]

hmurchison said:

Methinks it's time for a "Pro" or advanced option during future OS X installations where I can make configuration decisions that will yield a lean and mean OS X install.

Also don't forget to look at your Printer driver folder and delete all printers that you don't own. I had an Epson folder that was nigh a gigabyte of data. I don't have a printer so I got rid of them all.

Also a large part of Leopard apps have a file called designable.nib that can be removed. It's a leftover from Xcode that should have been removed. I removed them to the tune of an 800GB saving in space. They're trickier to remove but there are some tips on how to cull them via the Terminal.

A typical OS X install should be a third smaller than it is. I like the easy installer of Leopard but it ain't that easy if I have to go back and strip out 2-3GB of useless data. My time and HDD space costs money...I want them both working for me not against me.

There already is a Pro option in the OS X installer. it is called CUSTOMIZE. You can choose not to install all those unused printer drivers as well as all the foreign fonts, etc. You can slim down the OS X install to 1.5 GB.

You removed 800 GB of left over Xcode files? Wow, how big is your internal drive???

[hillstones]

wheat said:

You can save about 6GB of space if you decide you'll never use GarageBand's libraries of instruments and loops, along with the Themes in iDVD, iMovie and iPhoto. Most people will never use them.

root/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/
root/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/
root/Library/Application Support/iDVD/Themes

etc.

Then there's root/Library/Desktop Pictures, where you can save 100MB or so.

If you remove the iDVD Themes, then what do you plan on using for the Menus? Ditching GarageBand and some of the files is a huge savings. However, if you keep the looping Demo audio tracks (found in the main Library folder in Application Support: GarageBand), they can be used in iDVD for your background menu music. But you need to do a Spotlight search for GarageBand because the files are stored in both the main Library and user Library folders.

[MLO]

I use photoshop CS3 and Final Cut Studio 2, if I delete all languages except English how will the applications run? It's ok to delete the log file?

[Ilgaz]

I said "removing languages would be OK to some extent" and that was what I mean. Adobe is known to keep files other than languages in languages dir and some users report issues after language cleaning.

On goodly coded Apps like monolingual, Adobe apps are already in "black list", it doesn't touch them but if you used another tool, you better keep your CS3 installer DVD or download.

Language cleaning doesn't break signed apps for now but who knows to what date? It is Apple's decision.

[SpiceLMF]

BEWARE of these tips! I wish I had read the comments before trying these. I find it a bit ridiculous that a reputable website like Macworld would post potentially dangerous tips without warning people.

Basically, I used monolingual to remove languages as well as powerpc code. I was happy to see over 3gb of space freed up which I was desperately in need of. Everything worked fine so I thought ok, great. Today, I updated my mac to 10.5.6 and that's where the problems began. I can't imagine any other cause than these tweaks I performed last night.

Among the problems I'm experiencing are dmg's were defaulted to open in Disk Utility for some reason, my desktop items are in the desktop folder but won't show up on my desktop, firefox won't launch, oynx won't launch (applescript errors) and itunes at first wouldn't launch stating that it couldn't find the iTunes folder but after a second try it worked. I'm praying I can get my machine back to normal, perhaps restarting again and trying to run some utilities... but it's looking bad.

[hmurchison]

Language tracks would not cause a problem. Removing PPC could cause problem and that's
why I've left the PPC and Intel 64-bit portions. I'm happy to remove language tracks that aren't
needed. I updated to 10.5.6 just fine. I'd recommend that people leave the PPC alone because
some apps seem to have issues with missing PPC code (I think Adobe installers choke as well)

Language tracks should not cause a problem. Good luck on fixing your Mac.

[SpiceLMF]

My freak out was probably a bit rushed. I had restarted but that didn't help.. so I remembered I had changed my language preference from English to Gaeilge (as I figured it could be a cool way to learn; both of these I had kept while running monolingual). I tried changing it back to English as 1st on the list, logged off and logged back on and it was fine. I tried switching back to Gaeilge as the 1st on the list to see if I could replicate it but it's working fine even set at that.

May have been related to these tweaks but could have just been a freak accident. At the moment though it seems to be running fine crosses fingers