Can I safely delete Man pages?

[justperry]

I have safely deleted them before but they are all over the system now like in:

usr/local
usr/local/share
usr/X11
/usr/X11/lib/X11/
Developer/usr/share
Developer/usr/X11
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.4.2/Home/man
/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/rmdb.bundle/man
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/man
/System/Library/Java/Support/VisualVM.bundle/Contents/Home/man

I don't really need them and have been deleted many items not needed by Me or the System like:

All non English .lproj
All Help files all over the system
Documentation
Dictionaries
Voices except one
Non essential .Kexts like Geforce and Ati models, iSight,iPod driver,iTunesphonedriver and many more kexts without crashing. (Makes the system start up faster.
and so on.

Anyone can help me on this one.
Cheers

 

[GGJstudios]

If you're not certain what something is used for and how it affects your system, it's not a good idea to delete it.

 

[justperry]

If you're not certain what something is used for and how it affects your system, it's not a good idea to delete it.

I am not really a Dummy (I am not saying here You did).
I know pretty sure I CAN delete them, they are only terminal command help/manual files.
Thanks anyway

 

[waynep]

We used to delete them on Unix systems years ago to save on disk space. Given the size of todays disks, how much space do you really save by doing that on a Mac? Or is it another reason?

 

[r0k]

We used to delete them on Unix systems years ago to save on disk space. Given the size of todays disks, how much space do you really save by doing that on a Mac? Or is it another reason?

Same question I was about to ask. I wouldn't be surprised if you delete all those man pages and get back a whopping 735K (that's K) of disk space. OTOH, if you are looking for something to give you a quick 3 Gig, try deleting printer drivers for models you don't own.

 

[justperry]

We used to delete them on Unix systems years ago to save on disk space. Given the size of todays disks, how much space do you really save by doing that on a Mac? Or is it another reason?

Same question I was about to ask. I wouldn't be surprised if you delete all those man pages and get back a whopping 735K (that's K) of disk space. OTOH, if you are looking for something to give you a quick 3 Gig, try deleting printer drivers for models you don't own.

Its not really about space, I just want to have an as small system as I can get and that includes lots of rubbish not needed by the system.
Files like the video file when you start up the system for the first time (welcome in different languages).
There's a lot of stuff just not needed.
Printer drivers are indeed big one's and I already deleted most of them

I am on a PB G4 with a 80 GB disk, partitioned into a small and a big partition, the small one for when there is a problem, more or less to repair the other one if that occurs.

Cheers

 

[GGJstudios]

I am not really a Dummy (I am not saying here You did).
I know pretty sure I CAN delete them, they are only terminal command help/manual files.
Thanks anyway

I'm certainly not implying that you're a dummy. It's impossible for me to know in advance what level of computer expertise you possess, and this forum has quite a number of posts by those who deleted something they shouldn't, because they weren't certain about what they were doing. They aren't dummies, either; only insufficiently informed.

Generally speaking, the small amount of drive space saved by deleting system-related files isn't worth the potential risk. Moving user files to another drive will usually have a far greater impact on freeing up drive space.

If you know what you're doing, go for it.

 

[justperry]

I'm certainly not implying that you're a dummy. It's impossible for me to know in advance what level of computer expertise you possess, and this forum has quite a number of posts by those who deleted something they shouldn't, because they weren't certain about what they were doing. They aren't dummies, either; only insufficiently informed.

Generally speaking, the small amount of drive space saved by deleting system-related files isn't worth the potential risk. Moving user files to another drive will usually have a far greater impact on freeing up drive space.

If you know what you're doing, go for it.

I just wrote a long reply but then Safari crashed.

I already said that You didn't imply I was a Dummy so please don't be offended.

As always I keep a backup so if something goes wrong I start up from My second Partition and put things back where they were.
Part of the problem is that My system starts up slower than My G3 and thats why I want to have a system as slim as can be, I know though that deleting Man pages won't make a difference but other things do like moving non essential Kexts out of the system Folder.
I have only 1 GB of RAM memory since the other memory bank is not working due to an issue known by Apple but didn't do much about it.
So, the less the system starts up with the more memory I have.

I know I need a new Mac but I want to wait until Ivy bridge arrives.
So until then I want to slim the system down, a bit like an experiment.

Thanks again