How to remove the Dock in Mac OS X Leopard

I don't want the dock that is at the bottom of the screen. I don't want to hide it but completely remove it. How can this be done? If not possible, why not?

Your best bet is to leave it there so you won't mess with other services but shrink it to super small size using the following terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.dock tilesize -int 1

see below for example .. that's wicked small.

then pin it to one side with the following terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start

then hide it. It should be totally out of the way at that point unless you mouse all the way over in the extreme bottom left hand corner.

You can remove Dock.app, change its permissions, or disable the launchd plist that opens it:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Dock.plist

To revert the changes, replace unload with load or remove the entry in /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd/overrides.plist manually.

It also disables Mission Control, full screen windows, the Notification Center sidebar, the application switcher, Launchpad, Dashboard, and it makes desktop backgrounds gray.

This would increase the delay before the Dock is shown to 2 seconds:

defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 2; killall Dock

There is a program called: Dock Disabler (Source)

The Dock isn't perfect but disabling the Dock entirely will break certain features (eg. Expose in Tiger and Panther)