Can't make aliases inside the Applications folder

[macstatic]

Sometimes I'd like to create an aliases/shortcuts from an application which resides within a folder and place that alias inside the root of the /Applications/ folder instead. However, for some reason I can't do this on my wife's Mac running Leopard 10.5.8.

So instead of getting a "green arrow" type icon whenever I click the app's icon while holding down ALT and CMD I now get a white circle with a line over it, apparently indicating that this is something I can't do. I believe I checked my drive's permissions (using "Disk utility") but found no errors (or had the errors fixed), so what could be the problem?
By the way, I've also noticed that I'm asked to verify (with the user-login password) if I want to delete (put an application in the trash) something from inside the Applications folder. Is this normal? I'm not used to this from MacOSX Tiger 10.4.

 

[Hal Itosis]

Sometimes I'd like to create an aliases/shortcuts from an application which resides within a folder and place that alias inside the root of the /Applications/ folder instead. However, for some reason I can't do this on my wife's Mac running Leopard 10.5.8

Only admin users can write to that directory. Are you accessing her machine from an admin account? (i.e., one which her machine would acknowledge as such)

By the way, I've also noticed that I'm asked to verify (with the user-login password) if I want to delete (put an application in the trash) something from inside the Applications folder. Is this normal? I'm not used to this from MacOSX Tiger 10.4.

Leopard added ACLs (access control lists), so what you're seeing is probably related to that. [i.e., yes it sounds "normal".] You'll run into other examples, such as trying to rename folders. [e.g., inside a user account, we can't rename Documents or Downloads, etc.]