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chucker
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: near Bremen, Germany
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2006-06-05, 16:24

There are three (four, but the last is hardly used, so disregard it) different libraries; one for each "domain". There's the system domain, the local domain, the network domain and the user domain.

The system domain is, for the most part, exclusively for Apple-provided things.
The local domain is for everything else specific to your computer.
Forget about the network one. Chances are you'll never use it.
The user domain, finally, is specific to your user account.

This separation makes a lot of sense (and I find it sorely lacking in Windows). For example, for the most part, OS X only truly relies on what's in /System/Library, i.e. what Apple provides. Applications you or others install on your computer, on the other hand, often rely on things in /Library, which are shared among all users. Finally, for preferences and other things that only relate to your user (your address book, for instance), there's /Users/you/Library.
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