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Propose your solution
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dino
wrote on the 11 Mar 09 at 11:22
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The Good Thing About Standards: So Many To Choose From!
KiB or MiB looks like crap :D
http://xkcd.com/394/
while correctness is important, it doesn't really matter to nearly all users.
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eBrnd
wrote on the 11 Mar 09 at 12:13
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Well, this is about Nautilus, but what about all the other tools that come with Ubuntu - especially command line tools. Most of those just use K (or k) and M instead of kB oder MB or even KiB, and there is no system wide standard to this. So the real way to solve this would be to go through *all* Programs and all manpages and other documentation and correct the units. Or just leave it the way it is, users are used to this, and most people don't know the difference between kB and KiB. It's accepted that file managers use kB for 1024 bytes. And since most command line tools use K when they mean kB, I think even KB is okay.
Also, KiB looks unpleasant to my eyes ;)
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krs
wrote on the 12 Mar 09 at 08:31
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In the cas of Ubuntu, it's more a localization problem. Almost all French packages use KiB. It's unpleasant to the eyes the first day, then it becomes natural.
I think using binary unit is important to stop the confusion. 1024 is not 1000 and we need a correct prefix.
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davourak
wrote on the 13 Mar 09 at 11:06
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" Solution #4: ask edit
Written by linuxrules the 13 Mar 09 at 00:06. Report as spam / irrelevant
settings GUI have options for what units to use
"KiB/kb/GB/GiB/b/auto/show all units/other-custom""
How can I do this? Where is the "settings GUI"?
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davourak
wrote on the 13 Mar 09 at 13:11
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I noticed that Galeon uses kB (with lower case k)
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i meant to say that they should make a setting gui
sorry
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pante
wrote on the 14 Mar 09 at 16:59
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Why this idea has changed from using kB instead of KB to wether use kB or kiB?
Kibibytes or not was not the question here.
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Chuq
wrote on the 16 Mar 09 at 04:05
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KiB is an abortion of an abbreviation that was decided by a committee, no doubt paid off by HDD manufacturers so that they can continue to lie about their HDD capacities. I'm surprised enlightened Ubuntu users would succumb to it :P
1024 bytes will always equal 1 kB (or kb) to me.
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tgm4883
wrote on the 16 Mar 09 at 15:30
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Deleting solution #4 as irrelevant.
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andrew.p
wrote on the 17 Mar 09 at 16:16
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to Richieland (Sol #3)
1kB means 1000 bytes SIMPLY because "kilo" means "one hundred". The same about "mega". This is no marketing in this. It is just a question of language.
And a short note about Mbit: everything is OK about it now. 1Mbit means 10^6 BITS exactly as it should.
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davourak
wrote on the 18 Mar 09 at 22:43
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kilo means one thousand, but I guess that was just a typo on the part of Richieland. I agree with your comment though, Richieland. The word kilo actually comes from the Greek word for 1000 so it makes sense that it should only mean 1000, not 1024, which is why someone came up with kibi for 1024.
What annoys me though is when people write the symbols incorrectly, such as using K for kilo or m for mega, when it should be k and M respectively.
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andrew.p
wrote on the 19 Mar 09 at 22:21
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davourak
I'm sorry I just tangled the words. I meant exactly what you wrote). English is not my native language.
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leael
wrote on the 28 Mar 09 at 19:42
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If youre writing drivers or other low level software, you might be more interested in the powers of two rather than the "real" ammount of Data, since almost everything you work with is related to a power of two. RAM sizes will never be a power of ten, due to technical reasons.
People, who argue, that k means one thousand, seem not to know about these circumstances. I think, the average user will be more interested in seeing, how many thousand bytes her files consist of, naturally. I personally prefer to see the binary format 1 KiB.
Binary Kilobyte sizes should never be shown as kB nor as KB.
Manufacturers who display RAM/HD sizes in powers of ten should be punished.
A GUI switch would be cool.
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leael
wrote on the 28 Mar 09 at 19:46
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krs, davourak: Very often, a small k indicates 1000 (which is the correct case for that "k"), and a capital K stands for 1024. This convention is widely used, though sadly not a consistent standard.
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Endolith
wrote on the 30 Mar 09 at 16:32
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The vast majority of end-users think that k = 1000, since that's what it means everywhere else. This is a lot easier to work with than 1024, and is the standard:
"These SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10. They should not be used to indicate powers of 2 (for example, one kilobit represents 1000 bits and not 1024 bits)."
The only place the 1024 convention makes things simpler is when working with memory, which is naturally in multiples of 1024. In that case, we should use KiB = 1024.
File sizes and disk sizes are not multiples of 1024, though, so they are made simpler by measuring in 1000s. This is how the Linux kernel does it, according to the "units" man page:
When the Linux kernel boots and says
hda: 120064896 sectors (61473 MB) w/2048KiB Cache
the MB are megabytes and the KiB are kibibytes.
We should follow their lead everywhere else.
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Endolith
wrote on the 30 Mar 09 at 16:36
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the download speed of your DSL connection would habe to be specified as 6,291456 MBit/s instead of 6 MBit/s.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. When something says "6 Mbit/s", it literally means "6,000,000 bits per second", not 6,291,456.
This is the standard, and it makes perfect sense, unlike the "K = 1024" convention. This is the way it should be done everywhere for consistency.
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Endolith
wrote on the 30 Mar 09 at 18:46
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KiB is an abortion of an abbreviation that was decided by a committee, no doubt paid off by HDD manufacturers so that they can continue to lie about their HDD capacities.
Do you have any evidence of this conspiracy? No? Probably because it's BS. Hard drive manufacturers have been following the standards all along. They're not alone:
• A 500,107,862,016 byte hard drive is correctly written as "500 GB".
• A 4,700,372,992 byte DVD is written as "4.7 GB", not "4.4 GB".
• "56K" modems were 56,000 bits per second, not 57,344.
• A 2,000,000,000 Hz processor is written as "2.00 GHz".
• "Gigabit ethernet" is 1,000,000,000 bits per second.
• Blu-Ray disks hold 50,050,629,632 bytes, and are written as "50 GB".
• A 192Kbps MP3 has a bit rate of 192,000 bps, not 196,608.
The aberration here is the people who think "K = 1024", not the other way around.
I'm surprised enlightened Ubuntu users would succumb to it :P
I'm surprised "enlightened" Ubuntu users would desperately cling to the Microsoft way of doing things even when it makes no sense, confuses users, and conflicts with standards and common usage.
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