!@#$!@$@#%@# $^%$^#$&#%^#$ MAC !@#$%!

[mdlbear]

Stupid goddamn Mac filesystem is secretly case insensitive. If you have a directory called Tracks and a file called tracks, rsync complains about not being able to delete the directory when it goes to transfer the file. THIS IS JUST FSCKING WRONG!

The Mac may have Unix in its distant ancestry, but it is not Unix. When I get

Comments

[technoshaman]

Stupid goddamn Mac filesystem is secretly case insensitive.What *idiot* designed that? He deserves to be shot, and his head put on a pike outside Apple headquarters for the encouragement of the others

[mdlbear]

The Lenovo X series is very high on my list; budget is whatever I can persuade my boss that I can get away with. A new machine on my own budget is out of the question this year, though the XO will go a long way toward filling in the hole.

I could conceivably cobble something together with the XO in tablet mode, my Lenovo Thinkpad keyboard, and an external NAS/server, and spend work money on a new desktop. Or I could go with a Lenovo and use it as a desktop replacement, though I think it might be a little lightweight for that.

[autographedcat]

Given that Macs are now using Intel hardware, is there any reason you can't just put a real OS on the hardware you already have? (I haven't looked closely at the entire architecture of the new macs, so I don't know what other driver issues you'd encounter.)

[mdlbear]

I find the Mac keyboards unusable, especially compared to laptops like the Thinkpads.

[phillip2637]

Not so secretly case insensitive, actually. "Case preserving" is the traditional Mac claim. However, about four years ago (10.3) I believe they introduce a real case-sensitive formatting option.

I haven't tried it, so can't say what the fine print on it may be. I tend to use Macs as GUI systems most of the time and use Linux when I want Unix-like behavior.

[mdlbear]

Apparently lots of things in the OS and applications break -- you basically can't have a case-insensitive root partition.

[mneme]

Hmm. Technically, of course, the Mac -is- Unix -- the OS is BSD, and BSD is a unixy fork of Unix.

That said, yeah, by default, the mac ships with HFS+ -- a filesystem that like VFAT, is case-preserving but insensitive.

That said, my research indicates you can format any mac disk -except- for the startup disk(s) as case sensitive.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107863 might be useful; I'm not sure.

Actually, I think hfs+ can be set up as case sensitive, at least for Mac OS Server -- I'd guess that's what the above link refers to.

Of course, if you're wanting to be cross platform as in "anyone can unpack and build with this", well, yeah, you need to structure things in a case-insensitive-compatable way, since otherwise most mac and windows users will be fubarred.

[mdlbear]

Need to be cross-platform, and in any case my Mac laptop only has one partition, as do 99.9% of the Macs out there.

It's just one more annoyance.

[aerowolf]

HFS+ is case-preserving, but not case-sensitive, unless you ask it to be. This is the same kind of trade-off that Microsoft has had to make for the sake of backward compatibility.

You can format the drive as case-sensitive, but you will have a lot of weird trouble in applications which (sloppily) expect the insensitive-but-preserving behavior. The best option is to create a sparse disk image in Disk Utility and format it with the case-sensitivity, creating a sandbox that your case-sensitivity will work within.

[mdlbear]

In this case, the best option is to write software that doesn't take advantage of being case-sensitive, but it's just another reason not to use a Mac as my everyday computer.