Streaming as defacto metaphor for file access goes back to tape drives. Random Access patterns make more sense with today’s media yet we’re all still fscanf-ing

Of course there are alternatives but the resource-as-stream metaphor is so ubiquitous in Unix, it’s hard to avoid.

Drive letters are just /mnt, you can get around that, even with GUI.

So why a default Windows install still uses and shows C:?

Because A is reserved for floppy drive, and B - for zip drive.

A: and B: were both for floppies, dual floppy systems were around and common, both with and without hard disks, long before Zip disks existed, and Zip disks came around far too late (1994!) to influence the MS-DOS naming standard.

No, A: and B: were for floppies, when having 2 floppy readers was the norm.

But anyway ignoring the sarcasm my question was implying: if this is totally customizable in Windows, why Microsoft still ships C: (or whatever other letter) as the default name for the first user partition? Show it to legacy programs with hardcoded values to maintain compatibility, but at least in Explorer and MS controlled software, use some more modern/legible name.

Drive B was always a floppy disk drive.

Zip disks presented themselves with drive letters higher than B (usually D: assuming you had a single hard disk). However, some (all?) Zip drives could also accept legacy 3.5" floppies, and those would show up as B.

You're confused and you're thinking of the LS-120 SuperDisk. On some machines, it could be setup to appear as A: or B: when a 3.5" floppy was inserted.

Zip drives were never compatible with 3.5" floppies, and always were enumerated using the first available external storage letter (ie, D: in typical machines).

You're right! Thank you for the correction.