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Idea #21184: Fix file size confusion

bug This idea was marked as being in development the 13 September 09.
Written by Avantarius the 25 Aug 09 at 13:22. Related project: Gnome. Status: In development
Rationale
Every application treats file size units in a different way so you never know the real size of a file or a drive. I.e. my USB device shows up as 4.1 GB when mounted on my desktop, but as 3.77 GB in GParted, while the system monitor gives me 3.8 GiB - that's confusing!
Tags: file size units

426
votes
inprogress
Selected solution (#1): Fix applications to use the same units
Written by Avantarius the 25 Aug 09 at 13:22.
Fix all applications to use either binary units and the right prefix (1 kiB = 1024 Bytes, 1 MiB = 1024 kiB ...), or the SI-like prefixes (1 kB = 1000 Bytes, 1 MB = 1000000 Bytes ...), but don't mix them and don't use the SI-like prefixes with the 1024 factor!
92
votes
inprogress
Selected solution (#2): Let the user choose
Written by Avantarius the 25 Aug 09 at 13:27.
Create a system-wide setting which lets the user choose which unit system to use and how many digits to display.
-54
votes
inprogress
Selected solution (#3): Use the binary prefixes by default
Written by k33l0r the 1 Sep 09 at 18:54.
Let's use the recommended units in all possible contexts.
-5
votes
inprogress
Selected solution (#4): Ignore SI advice and use common practice
Written by Gaz Davidson the 10 Sep 09 at 14:35.
Nobody cares what a kibibyte is and haven't done over the past 25 years of home computing, nobody had a 64 kibibyte Commodore 64.

Use base 2 for file sizes and use upper-case KB, MB etc, without the additional 'i'. This is what the world uses; every website, all email clients, all computers since the first home computers. Enforcing KiB because it's scientifically correct is just silly, the majority of Ubuntu users are not scientists. Maybe give anal people the option to have KiB instead.

When showing disk sizes, display both base 2 and 10 in correct form (x GiB, y GB). This will match the units used by the disk manufacturers, while also being useful for users as their files are measured in base 2.

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Comments
coolen wrote on the 27 Aug 09 at 00:34
Solution #2, but use binary units by default, please.

stoffel wrote on the 2 Sep 09 at 19:12
Sidenote: according to Ars Technica the same bug has been fixed in the latest Mac OS X 10.6.

Djhg2000 wrote on the 8 Sep 09 at 10:33
Default should be 1 kB = 1000 Bytes, as k = kilo = 1000.
When you say 1 km you do not mean 1024 meters, right?

skipper wrote on the 10 Sep 09 at 12:29
There is a policy draft for solving this problem: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy

Feel free to improve the draft or to add a comment or suggestion to it.

Gaz Davidson wrote on the 10 Sep 09 at 14:38
This will potentially suck. Please don't use base 10 for file sizes.

Penguin Guy wrote on the 10 Sep 09 at 18:06
@Gaz Davidson - '1010000 GB Media' - Bad Idea

Gaz Davidson wrote on the 10 Sep 09 at 21:32
Haha, I suspect you know what I meant.
I don't understand why this is being downvoted so hard, does nobody else here assume a kilobyte is 1024 bytes?

yzarc wrote on the 12 Sep 09 at 21:57
since my first contact with computer I learned that kilobyte = 1024 bytes, the reason for this? simple computers work with binary and the closest 2^n to 1000 is 2^10 = 1024. I don't see any reason to change this.

nosoupforyou wrote on the 13 Sep 09 at 03:23
Keep the default display as using powers of 2 since that's what the majority of PC users have seen for years, and 1 byte = 2^3 bits, not 10^1 bits, so it makes sense to stick with powers of 2. It's still a good idea to display KiB instead of kB to avoid confusion for people and apps that insist on using powers of 10 since that's what kilo is everywhere else.

miamibc wrote on the 10 Oct 09 at 23:50
For me, kilobyte=1024bytes. I think best solution is allowing user to change format of globally used abbreviations by yourself. Put selection of date, time, size (including selection of base), decimals (decimal sign, number of decimals), currency and so on formats into localization options in system preferences.

theonebshaw wrote on the 30 Nov 09 at 20:10
I recognize that currently in the computer world K = 1024 99% of the time but this is unnecessary and improper therefore I vote assume K = 1000 as that is how it SHOULD be... same reason I use the Metric system for everything I do even though I live in the states, because it's the system that SHOULD be used. So long as we use only one or the other I'll be happy but I'd much rather see base 10 used.


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