I once ran into a bug in an Arduino program where it wouldn’t compile. The author blamed my “broken environment”. Turned out, he had included “arduino.h” instead of the correct “Arduino.h”.
From a technical standpoint, the windows NTFS filesystem is designed inherently case sensitive, just windows doesn’t allow creating case sensitive files.
Connecting an NTFS drive to linux, you can create two separate files readme.txt and Readme.txt.
Using windows, you can see both files in the filesystem, but chances are most (if not all) software will struggle accessing both files, opening readme.txt might instead open Readme.txt or vice versa.
For a few years now, Windows has had the capability of marking certain directories as case-sensitive. So you can have a mixed-case-sensitivity filesystem experience now. Yeah. :/
Case-insensitive filesystems are for maniacs. They are only causing trouble. Ever had two folders with the same name but different capitalization in windows? You see both, but whichever you click it will always open the same one, while the other can’t be accessed.
Psychopath behavior.
That’s because NTFS isn’t case-insensitive. If it was there’d be no two folders. Windows is a case-insensitive operating system running on a case-sensitive file system. It’s pretty clear Microsoft wanted case sensitivity and then realised how much legacy software that’d break.
Makes changing the case of a file/folder a lot easier though. Windows you have to rename it to something else then rename it again just to change case but Linux you can just…rename it. It’s a small thing but it’s something
Although you can use case insensitive filesystems with Linux, and case sensitive filesystems with macOS. I believe the case sensitivity is a function of the specific filesystem — but yeah, practically, the root for Linux is always case sensitive, and APFS ain’t is only if you ask it to be ( https://support.apple.com/lv-lv/guide/disk-utility/dsku19ed921c/mac ).
When case insensitivity is the default I always wonder how many apps unknowingly rely on that due to typos somewhere. I encountered this once while porting a Windows/macOS app to Linux that someone imported a module with the wrong case and nobody noticed
Fun fact, though: Linux is the only case-sensitive one.
Edit: I feel silly for forgetting that it’s all about the choice of FS. If anyone needs anything from me, I’ll be in the corner, coloring.
I once ran into a bug in an Arduino program where it wouldn’t compile. The author blamed my “broken environment”. Turned out, he had included “arduino.h” instead of the correct “Arduino.h”.
From a technical standpoint, the windows NTFS filesystem is designed inherently case sensitive, just windows doesn’t allow creating case sensitive files.
Connecting an NTFS drive to linux, you can create two separate files readme.txt and Readme.txt.
Using windows, you can see both files in the filesystem, but chances are most (if not all) software will struggle accessing both files, opening readme.txt might instead open Readme.txt or vice versa.
For a few years now, Windows has had the capability of marking certain directories as case-sensitive. So you can have a mixed-case-sensitivity filesystem experience now. Yeah. :/
Such a microsoft thing to do.
Least favorite part of linux honestly
Case-insensitive filesystems are for maniacs. They are only causing trouble. Ever had two folders with the same name but different capitalization in windows? You see both, but whichever you click it will always open the same one, while the other can’t be accessed. Psychopath behavior.
That’s because NTFS isn’t case-insensitive. If it was there’d be no two folders. Windows is a case-insensitive operating system running on a case-sensitive file system. It’s pretty clear Microsoft wanted case sensitivity and then realised how much legacy software that’d break.
Makes changing the case of a file/folder a lot easier though. Windows you have to rename it to something else then rename it again just to change case but Linux you can just…rename it. It’s a small thing but it’s something
is this bug really impossible to fix just because the file system is case insensitive?
You can turn it off, at least for ext4: https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/
Although you can use case insensitive filesystems with Linux, and case sensitive filesystems with macOS. I believe the case sensitivity is a function of the specific filesystem — but yeah, practically, the root for Linux is always case sensitive, and APFS
ain’tis only if you ask it to be ( https://support.apple.com/lv-lv/guide/disk-utility/dsku19ed921c/mac ).When case insensitivity is the default I always wonder how many apps unknowingly rely on that due to typos somewhere. I encountered this once while porting a Windows/macOS app to Linux that someone imported a module with the wrong case and nobody noticed
VS Codium did that at some point, it probably still does but I haven’t checked
As is right and proper.
On MacOS you get a choice when you format the drive.