Linux 5.2 Will Be A Huge Release: EXT4 Case Insensitive, NVIDIA AltMode, Fieldbus + More

[oiaohm]

Case sensitive filenames must go. Not because evil M$$$, but because they're stupid. There's literally zero use case for being able to have both filename.txt and fILenAME.txT in the same directory. If you absolutely need something like this, you're most definitely doing it wrong and you're a possible candidate for complete idiot.

Sorry there is not Zero usage case of case sensitive in this thread 1 was mentioned.

Worth pointing out that the kernel sources themselves still cannot be checked out onto a case-insensitive file system.

There are cases where you see README.TXT and readme.txt in different packages with one being current to use and 1 being future draft to review. Another one that turns up is file records containing names because you can have two people with same letters in name just with different capitalisation.

NTFS has added a directory flag to turn on case sensitively/turn off casefold in windows 10 because there are usage cases.

Reality is there is a need for case insensitive and case sensitive. So neither windows or linux for a long time did not cover all usage cases with file systems perfectly.

Yes a lot of old unix workloads contained events that required case sensitive.

Just because something seams stupid does not mean there are not usage cases that are best served by that stupid.

[anarki2]

Case insensitive file names will help support Microsofts trajectory towards Windows transitioning to the Linux kernel and Windows becoming a Linux distribution. I seriously believe they are headed towards this as their final goal.

It will be interesting to see when we can get bcachefs mainlined given its promise for XFS like performance with ZFS like features, which is a filesystem that Linux badly needs.

Dude. Seriously It's embarrassing. Just stop.

Case sensitive filenames must go. Not because evil M$$$, but because they're stupid. There's literally zero use case for being able to have both filename.txt and fILenAME.txT in the same directory. If you absolutely need something like this, you're most definitely doing it wrong and you're a possible candidate for complete idiot.

While we're at it, I might add, MS probably got only 2 things right with NTFS, first one is ACL, second is case insensitivity. The rest, like UTF-16, 255 chars path limit, and so on, are just bull, but the first 2 are extremely useful and handy.

[nils_]

Microsoft has customers with weird hardware that relies on that ABI stability (think hospitals). Also the Linux graphics stack is inferior to Windows. One of the reasons hybrid graphics sucked so bad on Linux was the tying of OpenGL to the display server. Windows never had this problem.

So what those customer do is use an outdated and unsupported version of Windows with all the problems that entails, just think of all the ransomware cases.

[campbell]

Worth pointing out that the kernel sources themselves still cannot be checked out onto a case-insensitive file system.

[oiaohm]

That's broadly irrelevant if you use closed source drivers. NVIDIA or AMDGPU-PRO don't use Linux graphics stack.

You need to catch up on this one.

Current day AMDGPU-PRO uses basically the same amdgpu kernel driver and API calls as the open source amd driver in Mesa for modern cards. And you can have one application using AMDGPU-PRO and another using Mesa on the same screen due to the fact they are both using the same graphics stack.

The claim Linux graphic stack is inferior is not true.

"One of the reasons hybrid graphics sucked so bad on Linux was the tying of OpenGL to the display server. Windows never had this problem."
This reason for this was in fact mostly that AMD and Nvidia use not to use the Linux graphics stack. Amd has way better hybrid graphics these days on Linux. they are using the Linux graphics stack that means when you are trying to share with the Intel driver in a hybrid set-up you are using the same graphics stack.

Nvidia hybrid graphics is such a nightmare on Linux because you have Nvidia closed linux drivers is stack based of Windows roughly ported to Linux attempt to talk to Intel driver that is based off the Linux graphics stack. Hello difference meet and go splat.

[oiaohm]

They'll keep to NT because NTs support model is different to Linux. NT for example supports out of tree drivers using stable ABIs that last decades. Linux does not. They would be loosing an awful lot of hardware support by switching to Linux.

Please stop this lie. At best windows driver support lasts about a decade. Absolutely not decades. If you want to use a driver over a decade old that was made using Microsoft so called stable driver ABI you will be using http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net ndiswrapper. Drivers from XP are totally flaky on Windows 10 to the point of I don't work.

Ndiswrapper is not the only wrapper that has been done for windows drivers.

There was attempt at one point to use windows printer drivers under wine in fact the developer gave up on it because he found out that stability problems were not his code but the printer drivers code so moved on to writing native linux drivers for the printers he had. There is a decent percentage of the windows pool of binary drivers are are pure defective from new not having the source means this is not that fixable.

The reality is kind of hard.
1) If Microsoft decide to move to Linux with wrapper work they could bring all the existing hardware support with them.
2) Volume of hardware supported by current drivers on Linux is larger than the volume of hardware support by Microsoft windows and all the third party drivers.

So in theory Microsoft invested the money to move the hardware support would increase but not as much as a lot would think there is over 90% of the Microsoft Windows from Microsoft and third parties already supported by Linux environment. Please note that 90% of the Microsoft windows driver pool is less than 20% of the Linux kernel mainline drivers there is over 80% of stuff in there that Windows does not support at all..

[starshipeleven]

It's all developer things, related to running on the Azure cloud.
Microsoft is betting on the cloud. They don't care if developers develop for Windows or Linux or whatever, as long as they use their cloud.

I agree that it's for server deployments, but Azure cloud is tangential to .Net, Powershell, C#. You can run the same technologies on any server running anywhere too.

They are porting programming languages, development tools, and such, not any end-user client software.

Yes they are migrating the ecosystem. Also providing WSL so that you can start relying on what is actually Linux without installing Linux directly.

It's a long distance shot, but that's ther B plan if they keep failing to catch on with their Windows-only stuff like their VR things or the AR glasses.

They're not porting DirectX, WPF, UWP or Microsoft Office.

DirectX will happen in due time anyway even without their intervention because Valve and others (so why bother and lose face),
WPF was born before this plan was in effect and it's genuinely not practical to port it,
UWP is basically dying even on Windows,
Microsoft Office is on Android, so yes they did port it to the main consumer Linux platform that actually matters in sales https://www.cnet.com/reviews/microso...ndroid-review/

[uid313]

.Net, Powershell, C# stuff...

It's all developer things, related to running on the Azure cloud.
Microsoft is betting on the cloud. They don't care if developers develop for Windows or Linux or whatever, as long as they use their cloud.

So Microsoft is porting things to Linux and open sourcing things so developers will use Azure. They are porting programming languages, development tools, and such, not any end-user client software.
They're not porting DirectX, WPF, UWP or Microsoft Office.

[starshipeleven]

They're not migrating core stuff.

.Net, Powershell, C# stuff...

Chromium Edge isn't even coming to Linux to begin with,

We don't really need a re-branded chromium, we have already Chromium and Chrome. (And Opera, and Bromine, and Brave, and Yandex, and my sword, and my bow, and my axe)

they're switching because of all the god awful Chrome only sites.

that means they have lost any interest in making an actual competitive browser to push their own crap to the Internet and they content themselves with just having something with their brand on it.

They might attempt a EEE later if they gain enough marketshare, of course.

They'll keep to NT because NTs support model is different to Linux.

This is one of the dumbest reasons you could have pulled up, you should feel ashamed of yourself.

Do you know about RHEL/CentOS? What about SLES? They keep the same kernel with the same ABI stable for a decade. And RedHat is around 1/10 of Microsoft in size so they could do the same pretty easily.

Also the Linux graphics stack is inferior to Windows.

That's broadly irrelevant if you use closed source drivers. NVIDIA or AMDGPU-PRO don't use Linux graphics stack.

One of the reasons hybrid graphics sucked so bad on Linux was the tying of OpenGL to the display server. Windows never had this problem.

Afaik it was more like a driver problem and the 100% absolute lack of interest from NVIDIA/AMD to do something about it.

On Windows they provide working drivers.

They have WSL, which gives them compatibility with Linux software, a company like Microsoft is perfectly capable of mantaining their own kernel

The point here is not "being capable", but "is it profitable".

Just as it is NOT profitable anymore to try to push their own browser with Edge, it's slowly becoming not profitable anymore to develop their own kernel. The beacons are already lit. It's not really news. The only unknown is "when" they will switch over.

Google is starting the process of dropping Linux and moving to its own kernel.

Google is keeping their eggs in more than one basket, the decision to switch to Fuchsia will depend from how it fares. For now it's not assured.

[tildearrow]

Really nice with case-insensitive ext4, especially for the /home/ directory.
Like for the ~/Pictures/, ~/Documents/, ~/Music/ and ~/Videos/ directories.

What I actually wish is proper localized names for directores, just like in Windows.

Linux still behaves like Windows XP in this regard. When you create your home directory, these directories are hard-named based on your language choice (e.g. for Spanish, "Documentos", " Música", etc.). This means, if you change the language, compatibility issues will arise.