As a full time desktop Linux user since 1999 (the actual year of the Linux desktop, I swear) I wish all you Windows folks the best of luck on the next clean install 👍

…and Happy 30th Birthday “New Technology” File System!

  • motorwerks@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    You like diving 12 folders deep to find the file you’re after? I feel like there’s better, more efficient ways to be organized using metadata, but maybe I’m wrong.

    • d3Xt3r@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not OP, but I occasionally come across this issue at work, where some user complains they they are unable to access a file/folder because of the limit. You often find this in medium-large organisations with many regions and divisions and departments etc. Usually they would create a shortcut to their team/project’s folder space so they don’t have to manually navigate to it each time. The folder structure might be quite nested, but it’s organized logically, it makes sense. Better than dumping millions of files into a single folder.

      Anyways, this isn’t actually an NTFS limit, but a Windows API limit. There’s even a registry value[1] you can change to lift the limit, but the problem is that it can crash legacy programs or lead to unexpected behavior, so large organisations (like ours) shy away from the change.

      1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation?tabs=registry
    • Riskable@programming.devOP
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      1 year ago

      C:\Users\axexandriaanastasiachristianson\Downloads\some_git_repo\src\...

      You run into the file parth limit all the fucking time if you’re a developer at an organization that enforces fullname usernames.

        • bighi@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          People have been talking about the real problem from the beginning of the thread: small character limit on file paths.

            • bighi@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Only if you go into settings, disable the safety measures and change it. And some apps might break.

              No, the default file path limit is 256 characters. And I don’t mean file name. Full file path.

              • Aux@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                No, you don’t need to change any settings, that’s the thing! Windows, unlike other OSes, has several APIs. Old apps (and dumb apps) are using old API and are limited to 260 characters. New apps are using new API and are limited by 32k characters. This “new API” is available since NT4, btw.

                • bighi@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I remember I had to change a setting when using Windows. And it even showed me an “Are you sure?” dialog. It wasn’t that long ago. Is that not a thing anymore?

          • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            I would be pissed if they made me use such a ridiculously long login name at work. Mine is twelve characters and that’s already a pain in the ass (but it’s a huge company and I have a really common name, so I guess all the shorter variations were already taken).

            Edit: Also, I checked it’s really very simple to enable 32kb paths in recent versions of Windows.

            • orangeboats@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              If your name consists of non-ASCII characters, like Thai words or Arabic or Chinese, it’s pretty easy to rack up >15 bytes in your username alone.