Re: what is linux good for?
The reason was historical, and predates both Linux and Unix.
Long ago, there were computers that had no lower case. Some of them used 6-bit codes. Others used character codes that could accommodate lower case, but their printers could not print lower case. (Back in the day, the better printers didn't use a matrix of pins, but "chains" carrying lines of raised characters in a line that would be struck against the paper.) There were even a couple of years there where ASCII had not yet got its lower case characters. So, while there was usually some way to upper and lower case the content of your files, the last thing you needed was for their names to consist of characters you might not be able to see or type. Hence, the native form of file names was generally UPPER CASE, and the UI would helpfully convert lower case names to upper case so you at least had a fighting chance to get them in the editor or feed them to the case-change utility,
And naturally, if you had a proprietary operating system where file names were case-insensitive, your customers had got used to it, and it would also be a hassle for them to reformat all their volumes, So things carried on long past the point where lower case support was ubiquitous.
If you grew up with it, it does not seem so strange. (Except, I imagine, if your're Turkish, because the lower case of "I" in Turkish is not "i". And that is the real problem with case-insensitive file names – whose case rules?)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
