In addition to maxpath (which can be ignored in most regular apps), I remember short filenames used to have some severe performance implications. For instance,

In addition to maxpath (which can be ignored in most regular apps), I remember short filenames used to have some severe performance implications. For instance, with Picasa we tried never to stat a file over Samba that didn't exist, because it would make Windows enumerate all the other files in the folder (presumably to see if they were a SFN match). That was a while ago (XP), but I just strace'd and it still seems to do it.