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.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

You're correct. I once was trying to rename a file in Windows in a git repository that had a wrong capitalization. It was tricky.

[–] riodoro1@lemmy.world 24 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Such a microsoft thing to do.

[–] The_Decryptor@aussie.zone 8 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

NTFS was designed back in the mid 90s, when the plan was to have the single NT kernel with different subsystems on top of it, some of those layers (i.e. POSIX) needed case sensitivity while others (Win32 and OS/2) didn't.

It only looks odd because the sole remaining subsystem in use (Win32) barely makes use of any of the kernel features, like they're only just now enabling long file paths.

[–] pixelscript@lemm.ee 12 points 11 hours ago

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. :/