Re: Case Insensitive File Systems -- Torvalds Hates Them

On 2025-05-01, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 01 May 2025 04:45:59 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>

As for case-sensitive file systems, I can live with them, although
case-preserving (but insensitive) file systems would be a good
compromise for me.

>
I’ve been wondering whether or not to take the plunge and create a case-
insensitive ext4 volume on my Linux system, just for a certain categories
of files where I find it particularly irksome to remember which way they
were named (as per the way certain artists write their names).
>
I fully accept this is likely to lead to confusion between the parts of my
filesystem where I have enabled case-insensitivity, and those parts where
I have not ...

Its probably not a bad idea to do that.  I've got an "archive drive",
which is just for file archives, music, art, text, documents, midi's,
game addons and maps, old software downloads, etc, and case sensitivity
is certainly not required there.  If anything, its a problem as
sometimes you get two copies of the same file, differing only by case.
That filesystem was originally JFS and I should have enabled the
case-insensitive feature at that time (JFS has had a case-insensitive
feature for a long time now, and is a pretty solid FS).  Of course, I
could have just use exfat or something instead.

This is the first I've heard of EXT4 having this capability, and it can
be enabled on a directory by directory basis, unlike JFS where it is the
whole filesystem.  Yes, keeping track of which have that "F" flag for
case insensitivity would be a bother.