Base-1024 Bytes?

[drfsite]

Hi,

So, I just installed Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop (I used it before, but not very much), and I noticed that GNOME is showing bytes with a base 1000 system.

As in, my 1TB external shows as a 1TB drive, not 900-something MB like it does in Windows.

As much as that's cool, I'm really used to base-1024 bytes and file sizes, and want to switch mine to that.

Does anyone know how to change Ubuntu so that it uses base 1024? Thanks!

[teward]

nope. dont think you can. by the way, you know Base-1000 systems apply to flash drives and external media anyways, right?

[drfsite]

Aww, what?
So how come with Debian it's default base-1024 but Ubuntu it isn't?

And my 16GB flash drive shows as 14.9GB in Windows. Blame formatting maybe?

[Zorael]

I believe it's intentionally left out per design decision, since the prefixes really are base-10 (kilo, mega, tera, etc) and not base-2 (kibi, mebi, tebi, etc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix)). I guess the devs wanted to put their foot down at some point.

So 16 GB equals to 14.9 GiB (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=16GB+in+GiB). Calling it 14.9 GB is just... semantically incorrect. :3

[drfsite]

Well, being used to Windows I like my GiB being called GB.

There's gotta be a way to change it back :(