This KnowledgeBase article explains how to prevent OS X from creating new .DS_Store files when opening folders on remote volumes mounted using SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS, and WebDAV. The creation of .DS_Store files (and more so, ._AppleDouble files which are not covered in this hint) is frequently the source of complaints against Mac users, who often [...]

If you use bash as your shell and use filename completion a lot, you can get bash to ignore the case of filenames just like HFS does.
Just put this in your ~/.inputrc file:
set completion-ignore-case on
Then, when you type ls /appli in the shell and force filename completion, you’ll get ls /Applications like you ought to.