Select Texture in 1.9 is actually Edit linked parts

If you turn on Select Texture, then select a single face on a prim in a linked object, then either move, rotate or resize it, it just does that selected prim, not the entire object.

I think this also messes up the object because I've often seen the object vanish after doing this while doing another edit. I can't reproduce the deletion though.

I had never thought you COULD resize things while "select texture" was checked. As I understood it, that finction was so that you could have multiple textures on a single prim. For example, if you want to us the same prim for both the ceiling of one story of a house, and the floor of the next, you would probably want the ceiling to be a different color than the floor. Select texture allows you to do this, one face at a time. If you want to do rotations of the whole object you'll probably have to turn select texture off. If you wish to rotate just the texture you'll have to do it from the texture tab. It is possible to rotate the texture of an entire object without having "select tecture" checked. This then affects all prims.

Sorry if I'm not explaining well, or if this totally didn't answer your question. I just sat and played with the editor to try and figure out what it was you were attempting, and that's what I came up with.

This is how it works in 1.8 too, although its slightly different from edit linked parts in that if you resize the object, the object will move so its centered around the same co-ordinates, while edit linked parts will move the coordinates so the object doesnt snap back.

Edit: And in 1.9 while it does allow you to edit the object it does seem to act as edit linked parts when resizing an object. I'm not sure what the correct functionality is, you could try bug reporting it and see