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> All native Linux filesystems (except ext4) are case sensitive about filenames which utterly confuses most users. This wonderful peculiarity doesn't have any s

> All native Linux filesystems (except ext4) are case sensitive about filenames which utterly confuses most users. This wonderful peculiarity doesn't have any sensible rationale. There is in fact a solid rationale behind this. > No polish, no consistency and no HIG adherence (even KDE developers admit it). See also: every operating system. It's unfair to pick on Linux for this since pretty much every Windows and Mac program seems to want to invent its widgets & unique behaviours, and this has been the case since at least the late 1990s when I got into computers.

jstanley 6y ago
Lol, I missed that. Is the article claiming that ext4 is not case-sensitive?
- lewiscollard 6y ago
  The author may be thinking of this work from last year: https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/ https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/ I do not know if this has since been merged.
- itvision 6y ago
  The article says that native Linux filesystems _are_ case-sensitive and that could be an issue for users. I've been working with computers for over 30 years and I haven't had a single case when I needed hello and HELLO in the same directory.
m463 6y ago
I think the problem with case sensitivity is that either EVERYTHING has to be either case-sensitive OR case-insensitive. It would be very hard to change such a deeply-rooted assumption. I have worked with collisions between case-sensitive and case-insensitive filesystems, and let me tell you it's not pretty. Some common problems: #include <Foo.h> // not found cp FOO.BAR FOO.bar foo.BAR /case/insensitive/file/system (all files cannot survive.) I think some problems might be very hard to change.
itvision 6y ago
> There is in fact a solid rationale behind this. Which is what? ;-)
- lewiscollard 6y ago
  I would recommend Torvalds on this: https://lwn.net/ml/linux-fsdevel/CAHk-=wg2JvjXfdZ8K5Tv3vm6+bKRedotF5cr5AwVZVBypVfdAQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/linux-fsdevel/CAHk-=wg2JvjXfdZ8K5Tv3vm6+b... As for my own thoughts on top... In US-ASCII, case insensitivity is easy. Outside of that, your operating system kernel has to have opinions on "Ö" being the upper-case "ö" and so on. But why stop there? Should "Ö" be considered the same thing as "O"? How about Ø? Or O with diaeresis[1], which looks exactly the same as "Ö" but is in fact a different character? How about Cyrillic O vs Latin O? But that also means that your kernel now has to have opinions about filename encoding. Maybe someone will come up with an idea so obviously superior to UTF-8 that it'll supersede it just as UTF-8 ate everything else, or maybe nobody will. What I am glad about, is that filename encoding wasn't baked into Unix in the 1970s, or indeed at any time prior to about 1993. So, your operating system needs knowledge of all of Unicode and to care about filename encoding for...what gain? It's only weird if your previous experiences with operating systems tell you that it is weird, and calling it weird is not the same thing as being an actual usability problem. In fact, as witnessed by the fact we're capitalising the first letters of our sentences in our comments, I would argue that case sensitivity is the default in normal writing (the word "it" being a fine example; if I had said "IT" you would have read the sentence differently), and so if anything's weird and counter-intuitive it's treating case as irrelevant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_with_diaeresis_(Cyrillic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_with_diaeresis_(Cyrillic)
  - itvision 6y ago
    Such a long comment and again what's your use case exactly? When do you need files e.g. named O.txt and o.txt in the same directory? Won't you yourself be confused by them? It's the simplest example and it already shows that case sensitive file systems bring nothing but confusion.
    - 6y ago

jstanley 6y ago

Lol, I missed that. Is the article claiming that ext4 is not case-sensitive?

lewiscollard 6y ago
The author may be thinking of this work from last year: https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/ https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/ I do not know if this has since been merged.
itvision 6y ago
The article says that native Linux filesystems _are_ case-sensitive and that could be an issue for users. I've been working with computers for over 30 years and I haven't had a single case when I needed hello and HELLO in the same directory.

m463 6y ago

I think the problem with case sensitivity is that either EVERYTHING has to be either case-sensitive OR case-insensitive. It would be very hard to change such a deeply-rooted assumption. I have worked with collisions between case-sensitive and case-insensitive filesystems, and let me tell you it's not pretty. Some common problems: #include <Foo.h> // not found cp FOO.BAR FOO.bar foo.BAR /case/insensitive/file/system (all files cannot survive.) I think some problems might be very hard to change.

itvision 6y ago

> There is in fact a solid rationale behind this. Which is what? ;-)

lewiscollard 6y ago
I would recommend Torvalds on this: https://lwn.net/ml/linux-fsdevel/CAHk-=wg2JvjXfdZ8K5Tv3vm6+bKRedotF5cr5AwVZVBypVfdAQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/linux-fsdevel/CAHk-=wg2JvjXfdZ8K5Tv3vm6+b... As for my own thoughts on top... In US-ASCII, case insensitivity is easy. Outside of that, your operating system kernel has to have opinions on "Ö" being the upper-case "ö" and so on. But why stop there? Should "Ö" be considered the same thing as "O"? How about Ø? Or O with diaeresis[1], which looks exactly the same as "Ö" but is in fact a different character? How about Cyrillic O vs Latin O? But that also means that your kernel now has to have opinions about filename encoding. Maybe someone will come up with an idea so obviously superior to UTF-8 that it'll supersede it just as UTF-8 ate everything else, or maybe nobody will. What I am glad about, is that filename encoding wasn't baked into Unix in the 1970s, or indeed at any time prior to about 1993. So, your operating system needs knowledge of all of Unicode and to care about filename encoding for...what gain? It's only weird if your previous experiences with operating systems tell you that it is weird, and calling it weird is not the same thing as being an actual usability problem. In fact, as witnessed by the fact we're capitalising the first letters of our sentences in our comments, I would argue that case sensitivity is the default in normal writing (the word "it" being a fine example; if I had said "IT" you would have read the sentence differently), and so if anything's weird and counter-intuitive it's treating case as irrelevant. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_with_diaeresis_(Cyrillic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_with_diaeresis_(Cyrillic)
- itvision 6y ago
  Such a long comment and again what's your use case exactly? When do you need files e.g. named O.txt and o.txt in the same directory? Won't you yourself be confused by them? It's the simplest example and it already shows that case sensitive file systems bring nothing but confusion.
  - 6y ago