What's wrong with creating a subdirectory under Drive0/Var for the purpose of installing user apps?

This way, it would not get erased with an .upgrade.

If the 2.0 final creates a new partition, then the partition would be erased with each upgrade and all the user-apps would have to be reinstalled every time somone .upgrades. I'd much rather see user apps go on the same partition as the music files and the config.ini. Not only would re-installing no longer be necessary, but you would also gain a lot of disk space for your apps.