Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Christopher Chanchristopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk wrote: Knock the doors of the POSIX committee This seems like a good idea. How are we going to do this? I don't know the procedures of IEEE. It may also be a good idea to first have a few Linux companies in the fold, like Canonical, Novell and Red Hat. If there is a group effort to bring this issue to IEEE, the chances of success will increase. And indeed, Microsoft could very well be interested too, in solving this mess. Remco -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Christopher Chan christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk wrote: Besides, I have already made clear in later posts in this thread that I really do not care what is used so long as it is uniform across all operating systems. If Ubuntu wants to do its thing while other operating systems keep convention, be my guest. You bet that I, for one, will not be installing it anywhere on school campus because the school has more important things to do than preach Ubuntu is right and all other operating systems are wrong which is why you have different numbers for GB on Ubuntu and XP, Solaris and Mac OS X and I will not risk looking like a fool or an Ubuntu/Linux fundamentalist for something the school may or may not care about. Opinion noted. But how will you explain that you can't burn a 4.5GB file onto 4.7GB DVD? Preach that Microsoft is right and TDK, Verbatim, Western Digital etc. are all wrong? For my myself I don't much care what Microsoft does. But I do have to read hardware labels, and the DVD example caught me. At first I thought k3b was being ultra-conservative in case it needed an absurdly large 200MiB index for some reason. YMMV. I do broadly agree that it would be best to discuss this with other OS vendors, or at least other OSS vendors, before making such a change. However, my hunch would be that users wouldn't be too scared by GiB. I'd imagine at first that they would see GiB where they expect GB and figure they look much the same, so they probably mean something similar. But maybe it would still provide a useful clue as to why they can't fit 4.5 GiB file onto a 4.7GB disk. We'd really have to test this on real users though to be sure (and this test may be relevant to the other vendors and standards bodies too). -- John C. McCabe-Dansted PhD Student University of Western Australia -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
John McCabe-Dansted wrote: On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Christopher Chan christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk mailto:christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk wrote: Besides, I have already made clear in later posts in this thread that I really do not care what is used so long as it is uniform across all operating systems. If Ubuntu wants to do its thing while other operating systems keep convention, be my guest. You bet that I, for one, will not be installing it anywhere on school campus because the school has more important things to do than preach Ubuntu is right and all other operating systems are wrong which is why you have different numbers for GB on Ubuntu and XP, Solaris and Mac OS X and I will not risk looking like a fool or an Ubuntu/Linux fundamentalist for something the school may or may not care about. Opinion noted. But how will you explain that you can't burn a 4.5GB file onto 4.7GB DVD? The same as how we are currently explaining things about hard disks. I just say they use different standards. No, I am not going to make an issue unless the teacher is one that actually wants to know and learn. Preach that Microsoft is right and TDK, Verbatim, Western Digital etc. are all wrong? :-D. I don't go into that. I just say operating systems use 1024 and hardware use 1000. Tada. For my myself I don't much care what Microsoft does. But I do have to read hardware labels, and the DVD example caught me. At first I thought k3b was being ultra-conservative in case it needed an absurdly large 200MiB index for some reason. YMMV. Yeah, just as you don't care what Redhat, Sun Microsystems/Oracle, and Apple do. Oh, oh, and HP and IBM too. I do broadly agree that it would be best to discuss this with other OS vendors, or at least other OSS vendors, before making such a change. However, my hunch would be that users wouldn't be too scared by GiB. I'd imagine at first that they would see GiB where they expect GB and figure they look much the same, so they probably mean something similar. But maybe it would still provide a useful clue as to why they can't fit 4.5 GiB file onto a 4.7GB disk. We'd really have to test this on real users though to be sure (and this test may be relevant to the other vendors and standards bodies too). Nah, they won't be scared by the GiB. It is just that GiB won't meet the wants of certain ones here. All in favour of the 1000 kB/MB/GB/TB? 1+ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Olá Chan e a todos. On Wednesday 03 June 2009 15:57:58 Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote: You have ENTIRE communities of Linux users who have never even heard of kibi/mebi/gibi let alone the IEC. Let me take this a bit out of context: you have entire countries who never heard of FOSS or GNU/Linux. Should that stop us from improving this movement and OS? -- Hi, I'm BUGabundo, and I am Ubuntu (whyubuntu.com) (``-_-´´) http://LinuxNoDEI.BUGabundo.net Linux user #443786GPG key 1024D/A1784EBB http://BUGabundo.net signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
(``-_-´´) -- BUGabundo wrote: Olá Chan e a todos. On Wednesday 03 June 2009 15:57:58 Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote: You have ENTIRE communities of Linux users who have never even heard of kibi/mebi/gibi let alone the IEC. Let me take this a bit out of context: you have entire countries who never heard of FOSS or GNU/Linux. Should that stop us from improving this movement and OS? Except that this is not 'improvement'. This is about blowing that erroneous three decade or so operating system convention of using SI prefixes for 1024 multiples of bytes out of the water without adding to the confusion that is leading to this move back to standards. That is absolutely not something Ubuntu specific and therefore not an improvement for the Ubuntu 'movement/OS'. Besides, I have already made clear in later posts in this thread that I really do not care what is used so long as it is uniform across all operating systems. If Ubuntu wants to do its thing while other operating systems keep convention, be my guest. You bet that I, for one, will not be installing it anywhere on school campus because the school has more important things to do than preach Ubuntu is right and all other operating systems are wrong which is why you have different numbers for GB on Ubuntu and XP, Solaris and Mac OS X and I will not risk looking like a fool or an Ubuntu/Linux fundamentalist for something the school may or may not care about. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 09:01:48AM +0800, Christopher Chan wrote: Except that this is not 'improvement'. This is about blowing that erroneous three decade or so operating system convention of using SI prefixes for 1024 multiples of bytes out of the water without adding to the confusion that is leading to this move back to standards. That is absolutely not something Ubuntu specific and therefore not an improvement for the Ubuntu 'movement/OS'. Besides, I have already made clear in later posts in this thread that I really do not care what is used so long as it is uniform across all operating systems. If Ubuntu wants to do its thing while other operating systems keep convention, be my guest. You bet that I, for one, will not be installing it anywhere on school campus because the school has more important things to do than preach Ubuntu is right and all other operating systems are wrong which is why you have different numbers for GB on Ubuntu and XP, Solaris and Mac OS X and I will not risk looking like a fool or an Ubuntu/Linux fundamentalist for something the school may or may not care about. People keep ignoring a part of the original issues pointed out here. While for some things (e.g. file sizes) there has been a recent pattern of using the metric units improperly, that is not true when other things on computers are measured, e.g. bandwidth, and is never true for any other units (energy, distance, time, etc). For the prefixes and units to make any sense at all to users, they need to be consistently used. We can't expect people to learn that M means 10^6 for everything except storage on computers. And anyone who does anything with the numbers (like dividing file sizes by bandwidth units) to see how long something will take will get results that are off by larger and larger amounts as we move from kilobytes to terabytes. It is certainly an improvement to make these things make sense. We can argue about how to do it, who to work with, etc, but this confusion finally needs to be cleaned up. Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
It is certainly an improvement to make these things make sense. Call it whatever you will. Improvement/fixing three decade long error We can argue about how to do it, who to work with, etc, but this confusion finally needs to be cleaned up. If I earlier gave the impression not to clean up, it was because this whole let's go back to standards did not quite hit me then. Now that we are done with that, let us get back on to the how/who part. Knock the doors of the POSIX committee and whoever else (Microsoft) down with a battering ram if you have to, we need to get operating systems makers to make a nice big announcement that they will finally stop using SI prefixes for multiples of 1024 and schools/whoever should stop explaining that kilobyte/KB = 1024 bytes, etc, etc. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Jan Claeys wrote: Op maandag 01-06-2009 om 12:03 uur [tijdzone +0800], schreef Christopher Chan: Stop changing age old conventions. kilo = 1000 is in fact ages older than kilo = 1024 :P Well, generations older, at least. Perhaps not ages :-) -- derek -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Op maandag 01-06-2009 om 12:03 uur [tijdzone +0800], schreef Christopher Chan: Stop changing age old conventions. kilo = 1000 is in fact ages older than kilo = 1024 :P -- Jan Claeys -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Op dinsdag 02-06-2009 om 10:59 uur [tijdzone +0800], schreef Christopher Chan: The interface speed in base10 yes. The number of bytes transferred, NO, because that is and has always been base2. I more or less agree with that: interface speed transfer speed should by in base10, number of bytes transfered should be in base2. That stupid IEC standard is at complete odds with the way computers operate. No, the IEC IEEE are groups of engineers scientists who want to make things explicit to avoid errors. For example, I am worried by the fact that so many sysadmins don't know that network speeds use base10; that means they routinely overestimate the available bandwidth. ;-) Use whatever base you want (preferably what is custom in your field of expertise), but make it explicit what you use by using the correct multiplier symbols. -- Jan Claeys -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Op woensdag 03-06-2009 om 23:11 uur [tijdzone -0400], schreef Evan: On the issue of user-interface, and KB vs KiB, please clarify whether you would always prefer KB, or you would prefer using KB for base-10 and KiB for base-2. I vote for correctness, so the latter. On the issue of labeling, the choices are to always use base-2, always use base-10, or decide it on a case-by-case basis depending on other factors (like HDDs using base-10 size labels already). The latter: use the *numbers* people are used to, with the correct, unambiguous symbols that engineers scientists need. I have some experience with applications that are (mostly?) using the rules above, and we never had any issues with users complaining, while at the same time we were technically correct (which, considering the recent debates about mandatory software warranties might not be unimportant...). -- Jan Claeys -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Mike Jones wrote: This discussion has gone on long enough that I'm no longer able to tell what we are discussing. Neal posted a GNOME bug report (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=554172) which I think sums up the issues really well. I agree with Evan that there are two issues: a) What should be expressed as powers of 2 vs. powers of 10? b) What names should we use for powers of 2 and 10? As to (a): There are a few places where there is a strong technical reason to prefer powers of 2. For example, memory is designed in such a way that you will always have a round number of bytes in base 2, but never in base 10. Everywhere else, there are strong arguments on both sides, including for instance: * 30 years of precedent for base 2 in the computing community * 300 years of precedent for base 10 in the scientific community * Interoperatibility with other systems (e.g. Windows) * Compliance to relevant standards (e.g. POSIX) So far as I can tell, everyone has made up their mind about which of these issues outweigh which other issues. Further debate is likely to produce lots of heat and little light. As to (b): I think the issue can be summarised like this: As developers of the English language, we get words from the dictionary (our upstream provider), and hand them on to users (our downstream receiver). We have agreement that the words are defined upstream as kilo=1000/kibi=1024, but do not have agreement on whether a valid bug report has been filed by downstream. This is a serious issue because the English language has a long and proud tradition of being modified solely through patches working their way upstream. Some people believe that any attempt to impose words from the top is an inappropriate attempt to grab power, which should be resisted on principle. Some people believe this is an especially egregious example because the computing community was hardly consulted at all, and strongly objected where it was consulted. My personal opinions: My understanding is that GNOME shies away from configuration options where possible, whereas KDE quite likes them. As such, I doubt that GNOME developers would be willing to make this configurable. Even if they did, you still have to discuss which option is the default. As I mentioned elsewhere[1], not all standards are equal. It's important that we consider standards seriously, but that doesn't mean automatic adoption. As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing is that the UI uses words consistently. A close second-most important thing is that the UI uses words that users can understand and mentally manipulate. I have no strong opinion right now about whether giga should mean 10^9 or 2^30, but I do have a strong opinion that ordinary users can't define the word at all. IMHO, the only words that are widely recognised by ordinary users are million, billion etc. As Scott mentioned, the definitions for these words vary[2], but I believe this can be managed with localisations. Since ordinary users don't have any words for large powers of 2, I would expect them to have difficulty thinking in base 2 no matter what words are used. Here's a thought experiment: in base 6, try calculating 4 + 4. Even if you understand perfectly what I mean, I bet you have to use your fingers :) - Andrew [1]https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-June/008376.html [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Wednesday 03 June 2009 9:02:05 pm Mike Jones wrote: A suggetion I would like to make is that perhaps instead of everyone bickering back and forth, we could gather some statistics on what the opinions of Ubuntu's developers are? I don't know how to go about doing that, but perhaps someone else might? It is possible to create a poll in Launchpad for the Ubuntu Developers team. -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Wednesday 03 June 2009 11:11:05 pm Evan wrote: On the issue of user-interface, and KB vs KiB, please clarify whether you would always prefer KB, or you would prefer using KB for base-10 and KiB for base-2. I would prefer the latter. On the issue of labeling, the choices are to always use base-2, always use base-10, or decide it on a case-by-case basis depending on other factors (like HDDs using base-10 size labels already). Again, the latter. -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote: Derek Broughton wrote: Christopher Chan wrote: You've completely missed what the whole thread is about. The age old and faulty convention is base2 for space and file sizes. That is what the Ubuntu team wants to get rid of. But thanks for supporting my 'argument' anyway. :-P I can't quite understand how _you_ have missed that this thread is actually about your refusal to concede that only dinosaur geeks want to keep KB and MB to show powers of 2. You're 100% right that the base2 convention is faulty - and have utterly failed to show any reason why we shouldn't correct the fault. It's _not_ however true that it was ever universally used - and that's why its faulty. As far as kilobytes/megabytes/whateverbytes in the COMPUTING WORLD, it was and still is universally used as multiples of 1024. Oh plonk. It is not... -- derek -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
2009/6/3 Chan Chung Hang Christopher christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk: Now that you have yelled till you are blue in the face about disk manufacturers using proper SI units and therefore we should although file and filesystem space are still being calculated in base2 units...may I ask how you plan to report the sizes for flash drives? :-D Hardware size: 27.9 GiB (30GB) Hover Tooltip: Hardware manufacturers usually use GB marking. GiB is maximum amount of data a GB marked harddrive can fit. Or You have connected 30GB harddrive, Open it up available space 27.9 GiB, Free space 27.5 GiB. If you use compressed file system (I thought i so somewhere a bzip2 file system) You have connected 30GB harddrive, Available space Appox. 50.4 GiB, Free space Approx. 49.3 GiB. ps. just noticed you have asked about flash-drives, well they are in GB - GiB ranges now so the example is over-optimistic but still aplicable to flash-drives ;-) Good link which compares both scales and has notes of where what is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(data) I was surprised Google Calculator only supports base 2 data units with incorrect SI prefixes. -- With best regards Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima), Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Christopher, On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Christopher Chan christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk wrote: You're nuts. ... What on earth is wrong with you people? ... Geez. Your interventions on this thread have been unnecessarily aggressive and, at times, personal. Please have a read of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct and try and avoid aggressive, sarcastic, or personal responses. You'll find that people will respect your opinion more, as well. -- Matthew East http://www.mdke.org gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote: Ok can we at least fix applications to use Ki Mi etc prefixes when they are counting in base 2? That might actually be the best for now if there is not going to be any public fanfare about Ubuntu taking the lead in returning to standards and dropping convention. Use the IEC prefixes and drop all mention of the SI prefixes since there is currently no consensus between operating systems yet. Or go banging on the doors of POSIX or make this return to standards as big as the Y2K bug even though some may not feel it is as critical. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Max Bowsher m...@f2s.com wrote: Mike Jones wrote: Do we have agreement that the correct prefixs for units that are counted in powers of two are kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, and so on? Not really, no. Some of us, myself included, are somewhat annoyed at standards bodies attempting to foist a bunch of overly-similar, awkward to pronounce, and generally stupid-sounding names on us. Max. Max, Thanks so much for your reply. Could you elaborate on what you feel that we should do in this case? You have a point that the prefixes are strange sounding, and confusing, but how do you differentiate between prefixes meaning powers of ten versus powers of two? People have pointed out earlier that some portions of the various major OS's will report in powers of ten, and others will report in powers of two. That's hard for me, as a user to deal with, so I generally just assume everything is a power of two and hope I have enough left over to not explode my PC. Do you think that we should instead make new prefixes? Or mandate that anything involving bytes is counted in powers of two or powers of ten (which I suppose needs to be decided by someone)? Now that harddrives are commonly multi hundred gigabytes, I feel that many users won't feel much of a difference either way if we changed the way space is counted (either from two's to ten's or ten's to two's. I always thought Nautilus reported in powers of two, but I think that someone said thats not the case). It might affect some people in how they percieve their drive's free space, but there isn't any less (or more) space, its just counted differently. Is that an option? Do most others feel that there should be a uniform method by which to present data counted in bytes? I know that the discussion was opened because someone felt it was important to be consistant, and I personally agree with him, but if the kibi, mebi, so on prefixes are'nt the right way to do that type of consistancy, what other options can we put on the table? A suggetion I would like to make is that perhaps instead of everyone bickering back and forth, we could gather some statistics on what the opinions of Ubuntu's developers are? I don't know how to go about doing that, but perhaps someone else might? --Michael Jones Junior Software Engineering Student Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology CTO of JAM Customs LLC -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Mike Jones wrote: On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 7:17 PM, Max Bowsher m...@f2s.com mailto:m...@f2s.com wrote: Mike Jones wrote: Do we have agreement that the correct prefixs for units that are counted in powers of two are kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, and so on? Not really, no. Some of us, myself included, are somewhat annoyed at standards bodies attempting to foist a bunch of overly-similar, awkward to pronounce, and generally stupid-sounding names on us. Max. Max, Thanks so much for your reply. Could you elaborate on what you feel that we should do in this case? You have a point that the prefixes are strange sounding, and confusing, but how do you differentiate between prefixes meaning powers of ten versus powers of two? People have pointed out earlier that some portions of the various major OS's will report in powers of ten, and others will report in powers of two. That's hard for me, as a user to deal with, so I generally just assume everything is a power of two and hope I have enough left over to not explode my PC. I know this is not addressed for me but I wish to clarify one point here. If it was the case that VARIOUS major OS's will report in powers of ten, I would not be asking for the SI/IEC prefixes to be added to POSIX. What is currently taking place is that some applications in Ubuntu in GNOME are reporting in powers of ten while others are still holding to the old convention of base2. There is contention about this very issue within GNOME too. The report of Windows using powers of ten is false. The page on Brainstorm has people citing Windows as being a problem because they use legacy (base2) units. There are no other operating systems that I know of that use base10 units when it comes to file sizes and disk space. Which I why I wish to push for taking this issue to the POSIX standard committee. I, personally, do not care what units are used so long as everybody agrees on their meaning. That everybody of course being other operating systems and not the Ubuntu team. A suggetion I would like to make is that perhaps instead of everyone bickering back and forth, we could gather some statistics on what the opinions of Ubuntu's developers are? I don't know how to go about doing that, but perhaps someone else might? The main thing that I am trying to get across is that you cannot treat this as an Ubuntu only thing. Unless you want to drive away some of your current users. On my own home machine, I don't mind what is used. But others will. The server distribution will certainly have to be careful on how and when a return to SI definitions is made. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
I have been hesitant to add my voice to this discussion thus far, but I think there has been some confusion as to what we are debating. There are really two entirely separate issues at stake, and it would be nice to clarify them. The first issue is how various things such as disk space should be counted, either in base 2, or in base 10. The second issue is how we can distinguish between base 2 and base 10 in the user interface. For what it's worth, I think we should count everything in base 10 and use the proper SI unit prefixes (KB, MB, etc). Most normal users have no idea what base 2 even is, and this is at least consistent with packaging for HDDs etc. Perhaps have an option to switch to base-2 mode (with KiB and MiB prefixes) for those who know what it means. Just my two cents. Regardless of the final outcome however, they really are two separate decisions to be made and should be treated as such. I would like to therefore call for an unofficial vote. On the issue of user-interface, and KB vs KiB, please clarify whether you would always prefer KB, or you would prefer using KB for base-10 and KiB for base-2. On the issue of labeling, the choices are to always use base-2, always use base-10, or decide it on a case-by-case basis depending on other factors (like HDDs using base-10 size labels already). I hope this email does not simply add to the confusion this thread has already generated. Evan -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Evan wrote: I have been hesitant to add my voice to this discussion thus far, but I think there has been some confusion as to what we are debating. There are really two entirely separate issues at stake, and it would be nice to clarify them. The first issue is how various things such as disk space should be counted, either in base 2, or in base 10. I would actually favour base10 for disk space, file size. After all, I'd rather not have to divide by whatever power of 1024 to get the number of bytes. Memory in base2 because that is the only way we can get neat numbers. The second issue is how we can distinguish between base 2 and base 10 in the user interface. For what it's worth, I think we should count everything in base 10 and use the proper SI unit prefixes (KB, MB, etc). Most normal users have no idea what base 2 even is, and this is at least consistent with packaging for HDDs etc. Perhaps have an option to switch to base-2 mode (with KiB and MiB prefixes) for those who know what it means. Just my two cents. This is where the main problem is. Other operating systems are still using base2 but SI prefixes. Solve that and the first issue won't be an issue. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 10:59:10AM +0800, Christopher Chan wrote: Neal McBurnett wrote: I agree. More details and discussion are at this ifconfig bug report, which came to the same conclusion: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/net-tools/+bug/240073 The interface speed in base10 yes. The number of bytes transferred, NO, because that is and has always been base2. You are barking up the wrong tree with regard to ifconfig's report on RX and TX bytes. Your beloved bit_rate page is only for interface speed. So a 100mbit/s interface can be reported as 12.5MB/s interface (100,000,000bits/8 = 12,500,000bytes) which is still base10 but the amount of bytes transferred has to be base2 because that is how blinking file sizes are calculated. The size of a file has always been base2 and so this nonsense of reporting disk space in base10 will only lead to discrepancies between the amount of space available and how many files you are dump on it. That stupid IEC standard is at complete odds with the way computers operate. I don't want to have to miscalculate just because tools started following stupidity and gave me numbers that were rounded up or down. Take this MB/Mib nonsense and stuff it. As a system administrator, I am having NONE of it. Have you read the actual references we've been providing? Would you mind providing some of your own if you disagree? This is not just the IEC promoting consistent use of the metric system - it is most of the relevant standards bodies. The world doesn't care that some system admins got used to a bad idea when it was in vogue for a short while in the overall history of the metric system. Users buy disks that list decimal multiples on the box, and are pissed when the system reports it as a smaller number. There are more users who want the world to agree on what the prefix M means, than sysadmins who want to redefine the metric system. E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Software The binary convention is supported by standardization bodies and technical organizations such as IEEE, CIPM, NIST, and SAE.[4][2][5][58] The new binary prefixes have also been adopted by the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) as the harmonization document HD 60027-2:2003-03.[59] This document will be adopted as a European standard.[60] As described elsewhere on that page, with pictures of labels and reference, files have been described with both properly labeled decimal multiples, and with mislabled binary multiples over time. The insanity must stop, and imagining that people will prefer a system where you transmit at 1 MB/s for one second and end up with . Saying that having 8 bits in a byte affects these arguments makes no sense to me. I bet most users and consumers don't even know how many bits are in a byte, and would see no reason to change what the prefixes mean based on it. Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Neal McBurnett wrote: On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 10:59:10AM +0800, Christopher Chan wrote: Neal McBurnett wrote: I agree. More details and discussion are at this ifconfig bug report, which came to the same conclusion: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/net-tools/+bug/240073 The interface speed in base10 yes. The number of bytes transferred, NO, because that is and has always been base2. You are barking up the wrong tree with regard to ifconfig's report on RX and TX bytes. Your beloved bit_rate page is only for interface speed. So a 100mbit/s interface can be reported as 12.5MB/s interface (100,000,000bits/8 = 12,500,000bytes) which is still base10 but the amount of bytes transferred has to be base2 because that is how blinking file sizes are calculated. The size of a file has always been base2 and so this nonsense of reporting disk space in base10 will only lead to discrepancies between the amount of space available and how many files you are dump on it. That stupid IEC standard is at complete odds with the way computers operate. I don't want to have to miscalculate just because tools started following stupidity and gave me numbers that were rounded up or down. Take this MB/Mib nonsense and stuff it. As a system administrator, I am having NONE of it. Have you read the actual references we've been providing? Would you mind providing some of your own if you disagree? This is not just the IEC promoting consistent use of the metric system - it is most of the relevant standards bodies. The world doesn't care that some system admins got used to a bad idea when it was in vogue for a short while in the overall history of the metric system. Users buy disks that list decimal multiples on the box, and are pissed when the system reports it as a smaller number. There are more users who want the world to agree on what the prefix M means, than sysadmins who want to redefine the metric system. Too bad it took over a decade (two?) before someone tried to sort out that misuse of the metric system. And they still have got nowhere after a decade too. Looks like the computing world don't care what the rest of the world thinks. Typical eh? E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Software The binary convention is supported by standardization bodies and technical organizations such as IEEE, CIPM, NIST, and SAE.[4][2][5][58] The new binary prefixes have also been adopted by the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) as the harmonization document HD 60027-2:2003-03.[59] This document will be adopted as a European standard.[60] Yawn. Please go rap something like the UNIX definition. As described elsewhere on that page, with pictures of labels and reference, files have been described with both properly labeled decimal multiples, and with mislabled binary multiples over time. The insanity must stop, and imagining that people will prefer a system where you transmit at 1 MB/s for one second and end up with . Saying that having 8 bits in a byte affects these arguments makes no sense to me. I bet most users and consumers don't even know how many bits are in a byte, and would see no reason to change what the prefixes mean based on it. Likewise, just pointing out these bodies makes no sense to me. Get this into the POSIX standard and then I'd be happy as a fish in water. Except for the part where I have to talk like a frog. Gribbit. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Max Bowsher [2009-06-01 23:41 +0100]: To my mind, the power-of-2 grouping is sufficiently intrinsic to the nature of bytes, whilst the kibi mebi gibi tebi stuff not only sounds and looks stupid, but loses a great deal of clarity by making all of the prefixes differ only in a single syllable. As far as I can see, the predominant opinion seems to be to fix 701.2 MB to be 735.2 MB, not 701.2 MiB. Martin -- Martin Pitt| http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 08:57 +0200, Martin Pitt wrote: Max Bowsher [2009-06-01 23:41 +0100]: To my mind, the power-of-2 grouping is sufficiently intrinsic to the nature of bytes, whilst the kibi mebi gibi tebi stuff not only sounds and looks stupid, but loses a great deal of clarity by making all of the prefixes differ only in a single syllable. As far as I can see, the predominant opinion seems to be to fix 701.2 MB to be 735.2 MB, not 701.2 MiB. Agree. That way we show a correct figure, and nobody needs learn a new unit. It also happens to match the standard for storage and bandwidth, and is what other operating systems are also tending to use (thus it's more likely this is what packaging will use). Scott -- Scott James Remnant sc...@canonical.com signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Scott James Remnant wrote: On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 08:57 +0200, Martin Pitt wrote: Max Bowsher [2009-06-01 23:41 +0100]: To my mind, the power-of-2 grouping is sufficiently intrinsic to the nature of bytes, whilst the kibi mebi gibi tebi stuff not only sounds and looks stupid, but loses a great deal of clarity by making all of the prefixes differ only in a single syllable. As far as I can see, the predominant opinion seems to be to fix 701.2 MB to be 735.2 MB, not 701.2 MiB. Agree. That way we show a correct figure, and nobody needs learn a new unit. It also happens to match the standard for storage and bandwidth, and is what other operating systems are also tending to use (thus it's more likely this is what packaging will use). Scott This is perhaps a bit heretical, but how about correcting 701.2 MB to 735.2 million bytes? As well as the heat produced by the MB/MiB debate in the computer community, laypeople only seem to understand mega and giga by mapping them to million and billion. Using the longer term meets Scott's criteria, makes Ubuntu more accessible, and saves us all a bunch of time explaining what a terabyte is when our parents start getting them. Even in a small dialogue box, a size of 735.2 mln doesn't take many more pixels. - Andrew -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 10:23 +0100, Andrew Sayers wrote: This is perhaps a bit heretical, but how about correcting 701.2 MB to 735.2 million bytes? As well as the heat produced by the MB/MiB debate in the computer community, laypeople only seem to understand mega and giga by mapping them to million and billion. Using the longer term meets Scott's criteria, makes Ubuntu more accessible, and saves us all a bunch of time explaining what a terabyte is when our parents start getting them. Even in a small dialogue box, a size of 735.2 mln doesn't take many more pixels. Because this is yet another strange postfix or unit that users would have to learn. 735.2 MB is not confusing if it means ~735,200,000 bytes. Scott -- Scott James Remnant sc...@canonical.com signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
snip - using million and mln rather than mega and MB) Scott James Remnant wrote: ... this is yet another strange postfix or unit that users would have to learn. 735.2 MB is not confusing if it means ~735,200,000 bytes. That's a good point for the short form, so long as the UI spells out elsewhere what MB means. How about using million bytes by default, and MB where there's a significant pixel constraint? That explains things to the user of average curiosity, and doesn't require any terminology they haven't used before. - Andrew -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Tue, 2009-06-02 at 11:22 +0100, Andrew Sayers wrote: Scott James Remnant wrote: ... this is yet another strange postfix or unit that users would have to learn. 735.2 MB is not confusing if it means ~735,200,000 bytes. That's a good point for the short form, so long as the UI spells out elsewhere what MB means. How about using million bytes by default, and MB where there's a significant pixel constraint? That explains things to the user of average curiosity, and doesn't require any terminology they haven't used before. What would you use for the thousand million bytes case? :) HINT: the meaning of billion differs between thousand million and million million depending on your location. Most people in the metric-speaking world know what Kilo means, and have proved themselves able to learn Mega, Giga, etc. Scott -- Scott James Remnant sc...@canonical.com signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Scott James Remnant wrote: What would you use for the thousand million bytes case? :) HINT: the meaning of billion differs between thousand million and million million depending on your location. Most people in the metric-speaking world know what Kilo means, and have proved themselves able to learn Mega, Giga, etc. Billion increasingly means 10^9 - Wikipedia claims[1] that the long scale is mostly used in non-English-speaking regions, so it's safe to use billion unless the localisation in use says otherwise (at which point, locale-specific words are needed anyway). I agree that people can learn what mega and giga mean, so long as you give them the opportunity to learn. Using million bytes interchangeably with MB gives significantly more people that opportunity. Mega is also a problem because accessibility isn't just about the ability to understand something, it's about the amount of mental effort required. Grab a non-technical friend or family member and ask them how many million in a billion, then how many kilobytes in a megabyte. You'll find they have to think longer and harder to answer the second question, if they can do it at all. I'm not clear what extra value mega provides that's worth so many wasted cycles. - Andrew [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Tuesday 02 June 2009 7:19:12 am Andrew Sayers wrote: Mega is also a problem because accessibility isn't just about the ability to understand something, it's about the amount of mental effort required. Grab a non-technical friend or family member and ask them how many million in a billion, then how many kilobytes in a megabyte. You'll find they have to think longer and harder to answer the second question, if they can do it at all. I'm not clear what extra value mega provides that's worth so many wasted cycles. Nor does such tedium matter to them! What matters is I have a 4GB MP3 player. An MP3 is about 3 or 4 MB, whatever a MB is. That means I can fit about 1000 songs on my MP3 player. Anything smaller than 1MB is written off as sufficiently miniscule. It's like worrying about a few grains of rice when measuring it bushels. Yes, the grains add up, but when the time comes to make more space are you going to scoop out a few grains, or are you going to pitch it by the gallon? -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Tuesday 02 June 2009 2:57:14 am Christopher Chan wrote: Likewise, just pointing out these bodies makes no sense to me. Get this into the POSIX standard and then I'd be happy as a fish in water. Except for the part where I have to talk like a frog. Gribbit. What makes POSIX omniscient? -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Andrew Sayers wrote: I agree that people can learn what mega and giga mean, so long as you give them the opportunity to learn. Using million bytes interchangeably with MB gives significantly more people that opportunity. Sorry, I simply can't believe that. Mega is also a problem because accessibility isn't just about the ability to understand something, it's about the amount of mental effort required. Grab a non-technical friend or family member and ask them how many million in a billion, then how many kilobytes in a megabyte. You're _equally_ likely to get a right answer - as somebody has already pointed out, a billion is a pretty flexible number. -- derek -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
That grab a friend experiment is one of those posts where my inner science geek betrays me. I chose kilo and mega instead of mega and giga so that I would be less likely to skew the experiment by asking the same exact question twice in a row with different phrasing. A more robust methodology would allow for valid comparison between million and mega... I don't suppose you know any identical twins with a penchant for answering simple maths questions? ;) When I asked my father, he understood that a kilobyte was less than a megabyte, which was less than a gigabyte. But he had no idea how much less - he would have believed me if I said a gigabyte was 10 or 10,000 megabytes. I actually like your MP3 player example by the way - if I told my dad that his MP3 player had a capacity of 4 billion bytes, and an average MP3 was 4 million bytes, he'd be able to do exactly the calculation you described. With MB and GB, he'll need a pencil and paper no matter how many times I explain it. - Andrew -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Derek Broughton wrote: Max Bowsher wrote: Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote: Benjamin Drung wrote: On Mon Jun 1 04:15:19 BST 2009 Remco wrote: I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. That is what the bug report is about. Using MiB for values, wich are base 2. So is there anybody who wants to keep the old confusing behaviour? /me raises hand. Ditto. To my mind, the power-of-2 grouping is sufficiently intrinsic to the nature of bytes, whilst the kibi mebi gibi tebi stuff not only sounds and looks stupid, but loses a great deal of clarity by making all of the prefixes differ only in a single syllable. How can _explicitly_ naming units be less clear than making people guess whether units are 10**2 or 2**10? I don't know...like I only found out that there is this thing called kibi, mebi, gibi, etc? I've argued with Christopher about this before, and don't want to continue it here, but I really think it's hypocritical for a distribution based on _standards_ to ignore the fact that we _have_ standards for this, simply because real geeks count in binary. Yada yada bitrates. Hey, I did submit in a post in this thread that I was wrong and that network equipment/bandwidths actually go by base10 whateverbits. As for stupid, kibi only looks or sounds stupid to people who've never used the units. To the average user, kilobytes is equally stupid. Dunno, never seemed to be a problem with all those users I taught in Windows classes before. Posting in a local Linux newsgroup this kibi,megi,gibi nonsense drew blanks. Nobody knew what I was talking about. Don't you love standards that are not known to exist? Anyway, I will join you chums in kowtowing to the users and unheard of standards...once this across the board. How nice it would be to scp a file over and get a different size report. Get this into POSIX or something or be the oddball. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 4:39 PM, Chan Chung Hang Christopher christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk wrote: Anyway, I will join you chums in kowtowing to the users and unheard of standards...once this across the board. How nice it would be to scp a file over and get a different size report. Get this into POSIX or something or be the oddball. That's a reasonable argument against following the international standard. This can be worked around by not changing commandline tools (since they already have --si options), and having GUI tools that work with remote filesystems do conversions for us. It's also not unreasonable to have two size columns in Nautilus. We already have two permissions columns and two type columns. Remco -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
This discussion is devolving into apples vs oranges, so here is a shot at helping us focus again. Note the subject line talks about the Desktop, not the command-line stuff where POSIX got its start. The original post on this topic was talking about Gnome and glib: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/glib2.0/+bug/369525 I doubt that POSIX has anything to say about glib, but perhaps I'm missing something. There I think using standard SI units properly is probably the best approach for desktop users in Gnome. I think we've already seen that many interesting command line apps (which POSIX does address) have a --si option which I'm guessing allows folks to stay POSIX-compliant or get something that meets the SI standard, so that's cool. We've also discussed the fix (already fixed in intrepid) for ifconfig. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/net-tools/+bug/240073 and I don't know but I somehow doubt that there is a POSIX issue there, though I guess that some folks might parse the output and get confused. But it seems like the right direction to go. I think it will help in this discussion to be very specific about which tool or application we're talking about. I think POSIX is important, as is clarity and consistency about use of unit prefixes, as is consistency with upstream and other distros. And as we've seen, those can conflict. So I expect it to be an ongoing conversation as we look at each package. If we can use standard SI and/or IEC units without violating POSIX, I think we should. There was also a discussion all this last September on the devel list: Ubuntu Policy: prefixes for multiples of units https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-September/026567.html and I recall a discussion at UDS-Jaunty https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDSJaunty about it but the link on that page to the schedule is gone http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-jaunty/ and I don't see any mention of it in the reports. Scott - can you shed some more light on that? In general the best way to have an effect is to comment in the bug reports, or in the blueprint, both of which help to preserve important context. See also the Gnome bug discussions: storage units standard http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309850 g_format_size_for_display() should use correct IEC units http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=554172 Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
2009/6/3 Christopher Chan christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk: Mackenzie Morgan wrote: On Tuesday 02 June 2009 10:49:57 am Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote: You're nuts. Decades have been spend in TEACHING kilo/mega/whatever = multiples of 1024 when it comes to computers and now you think just changing that convention silently is okay? Yeas I have been tought about 2^10 multiples. What on earth is wrong with you people? Very few people out there know about the whole kibi/mebi/gibi business and you want to cause more confusion by having people download a file that is said to be X Mbytes but Nautilus reports is Y Mbytes? kibi/mebi/gibi is your usual 2^10 stuff so no new things Get the standard incorporated into POSIX, implement along with others and then get the educators 'uneducated' about 1024 multiples. Unless you want people on Ubuntu being the odd ones out when it comes to file sizes. Geez. Well not the odd once. I you buy a 30GB ipod and plug it in it is reasonable to expect to see a 30GB hard-drive which reports so much free space eg 25GB and it is resonable that in Nautilus a 25GB folder will fit in 25GB free space on the hard-drive. The 30GB hard-drives are measured in the base 10 though... so this is what we are discussing that even thouse educated people are aware of 1024, the actuall storage hardware uses base 10... So I think that Nautilus should youse base 10 for the total size, while using base 2 for the free available space and the sizes of files. -- With best regards Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima), Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Benjamin, Benjamin Drung wrote: Hi, I hope this mailing list is the right place to discuss the problem. No, I now feel old because of your post. There is currently an inconsistency with units across the Ubuntu desktop. Some applications (such as gvfs) use legacy units, such as a 1024-byte kilobyte. Others (such as System Monitor) use international standard units, such as a 1000-byte kilobyte. Ubuntu should decide its units philosophy and apply it consistently across the desktop. Details: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-unit-consistency/ [looks up links] Ubuntu should use following convention: k- = 1,000, M- = 1,000,000, ... Ki- = 1,024, Mi- = 1,048,576, ... Here are some pro arguments: * The users want it. Look at brainstorm: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4114/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/17839/ * The Linux kernel uses it (man units). * It is standardised. * It would avoid ambiguity and consumer confusion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Consumer_confusion Yeah, yeah. I guess I now know how an old dog feels. /me goes off to practice saying: kibibyte, megibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte. /me swats the first bee he sees. /me uses a GNOME as a decoy for the angry bees coming after him. /me gets a stiff jaw. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Mon Jun 1 04:15:19 BST 2009 Remco wrote: I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. That is what the bug report is about. Using MiB for values, wich are base 2. So is there anybody who wants to keep the old confusing behaviour? Cheers, Benjamin signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Benjamin Drung wrote: On Mon Jun 1 04:15:19 BST 2009 Remco wrote: I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. That is what the bug report is about. Using MiB for values, wich are base 2. So is there anybody who wants to keep the old confusing behaviour? /me raises hand. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote: Benjamin Drung wrote: On Mon Jun 1 04:15:19 BST 2009 Remco wrote: I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. That is what the bug report is about. Using MiB for values, wich are base 2. So is there anybody who wants to keep the old confusing behaviour? /me raises hand. Ditto. To my mind, the power-of-2 grouping is sufficiently intrinsic to the nature of bytes, whilst the kibi mebi gibi tebi stuff not only sounds and looks stupid, but loses a great deal of clarity by making all of the prefixes differ only in a single syllable. Max. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 09:23:25AM +0200, Martin Pitt wrote: Remco [2009-06-01 5:15 +0200]: I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. Indeed this is a bug which we should fix. It should say 735.3 MB. While that may be true, the most useful thing about base 10 is that normal humans can actually understand it. We cannot calculate using a binary number system. Base 2 is not useful for anything, except sometimes in programming. I'm still inclined to keep the exception for RAM size, though, since they consistently come in multiples of MiB/GiB. Everything else should use MB/GB, though. I agree. More details and discussion are at this ifconfig bug report, which came to the same conclusion: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/net-tools/+bug/240073 Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Neal McBurnett wrote: On Mon, Jun 01, 2009 at 09:23:25AM +0200, Martin Pitt wrote: Remco [2009-06-01 5:15 +0200]: I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. Indeed this is a bug which we should fix. It should say 735.3 MB. While that may be true, the most useful thing about base 10 is that normal humans can actually understand it. We cannot calculate using a binary number system. Base 2 is not useful for anything, except sometimes in programming. I'm still inclined to keep the exception for RAM size, though, since they consistently come in multiples of MiB/GiB. Everything else should use MB/GB, though. I agree. More details and discussion are at this ifconfig bug report, which came to the same conclusion: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/net-tools/+bug/240073 The interface speed in base10 yes. The number of bytes transferred, NO, because that is and has always been base2. You are barking up the wrong tree with regard to ifconfig's report on RX and TX bytes. Your beloved bit_rate page is only for interface speed. So a 100mbit/s interface can be reported as 12.5MB/s interface (100,000,000bits/8 = 12,500,000bytes) which is still base10 but the amount of bytes transferred has to be base2 because that is how blinking file sizes are calculated. The size of a file has always been base2 and so this nonsense of reporting disk space in base10 will only lead to discrepancies between the amount of space available and how many files you are dump on it. That stupid IEC standard is at complete odds with the way computers operate. I don't want to have to miscalculate just because tools started following stupidity and gave me numbers that were rounded up or down. Take this MB/Mib nonsense and stuff it. As a system administrator, I am having NONE of it. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Max Bowsher wrote: To my mind, the power-of-2 grouping is sufficiently intrinsic to the nature of bytes, whilst the kibi mebi gibi tebi stuff not only sounds and looks stupid, but loses a great deal of clarity by making all of the prefixes differ only in a single syllable. Clarity like the size of 1.44MB floppy disks? http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/1mb44-is-not-a-standard-floppy-disc-size.html Nils -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Christopher Chan wrote: That stupid IEC standard is at complete odds with the way computers operate. I don't want to have to miscalculate just because tools started following stupidity and gave me numbers that were rounded up or down. Take this MB/Mib nonsense and stuff it. As a system administrator, I am having NONE of it. Why do you refuse to learn something new? Nils -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Nils Kassube wrote: Christopher Chan wrote: That stupid IEC standard is at complete odds with the way computers operate. I don't want to have to miscalculate just because tools started following stupidity and gave me numbers that were rounded up or down. Take this MB/Mib nonsense and stuff it. As a system administrator, I am having NONE of it. Why do you refuse to learn something new? Ha! Why should I learn something that is NOT STANDARD? Yap all you like about IEC and whoever else but until this thing is consistent not only across all Linux distributions but also across other operating systems like the BSDs, Mac OS X, members of the UNIX family (Solaris, OpenSolaris, AIX) and Windows I am not having any of it. A bunch of academics gets together and says, no, you cannot call that whatever, call it crumbybyte and nobody has paid much attention for the last decade. Great. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Lars Wirzenius wrote: to, 2009-05-28 kello 23:23 +0200, Benjamin Drung kirjoitti: There is currently an inconsistency with units across the Ubuntu desktop. Some applications (such as gvfs) use legacy units, such as a 1024-byte kilobyte. Others (such as System Monitor) use international standard units, such as a 1000-byte kilobyte. Ubuntu should decide its units philosophy and apply it consistently across the desktop. Ubuntu has, pretty much, decided on base-10 kilobytes. This is wrong in imho. RAM comes in multiples of 1024. Network throughput is also in multiples of 1024. Disk storage is expressed in multiples of 1024 under any operating system. base-10 kilobytes/kilobits/whateverbytes/whateverbits are only used by disk manufacturers (hence the 'discrepancy' between that the label on the disk says and what the operating system says) and misconceptions of certain network equipment manufacturers (eg: 100megabit/1000megabit) being base-10. Each block on disk remains 512 bits (half a proper kilobyte) and so going for base-10 kilobytes requires translation while using proper kilobytes requires no translation. base-10 kilobytes/megabytes/gigabytes have no place in software. They belong solely on hard disk labels along with their footnote indicating that they are the wrong kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte definition. A thought: Quite a number of programs need to convert sizes and other amounts into units suitable for the user. While this is reasonably easy to do (unless you want to be fancy), it's silly to duplicate the code everywhere. Wouldn't it be sensible to add some functions to, say, glib to do this? Something like: char *unit_format_time(double seconds); char *unit_format_filesize(long long bytes); unit_format_time(1) would return 1 s unit_format_filesize(1024) would return, depending on user preferences and software context, 1 kB 24 bytes, 1 kilobyte, or 1 KiB (user could indicate preference for power-of-2 kilobytes). Such functions could be made fancy to allow things like unit_format_filesize(1500) returning either 1.5 kilobytes or 1 kB 500 B, depending on the number of significant digits desired. Take that up with the GlibC guys and/or the C/C++ standards body if you wish and I personally do not want to see any distribution specific library of such functions and the resulting distribution specific patches of packages to use that library. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Mackenzie Morgan maco...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday 31 May 2009 9:12:37 pm Christopher Chan wrote: Disk storage is expressed in multiples of 1024 under any operating system. Are you sure? Usually I see Windows users in #ubuntu complaining that Ubuntu only sees 112GB of their 120GB drive while Windows sees all 120GB. Take a look at the properties of a file in Nautilus. It will tell you a file is x MB, and y bytes. I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. This then results in an explanation that no no, see Ubuntu says GiB, not GB, and that little i in there means it's Gibibytes which the IEEE has decided means 1024- based, not 1000-based which is Gigabytes and the way the manufacturer measures so that they can give you fewer Gibibytes and pretend it's just as many. While that may be true, the most useful thing about base 10 is that normal humans can actually understand it. We cannot calculate using a binary number system. Base 2 is not useful for anything, except sometimes in programming. Remco -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Sunday 31 May 2009 11:15:19 pm Remco wrote: On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 4:58 AM, Mackenzie Morgan maco...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday 31 May 2009 9:12:37 pm Christopher Chan wrote: Disk storage is expressed in multiples of 1024 under any operating system. Are you sure? Usually I see Windows users in #ubuntu complaining that Ubuntu only sees 112GB of their 120GB drive while Windows sees all 120GB. Take a look at the properties of a file in Nautilus. It will tell you a file is x MB, and y bytes. I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. I was disagreeing with the under any since AFAIK, Windows uses 1000 while Ubuntu does indeed use 1024. I'll take your word for it that Nautilus leaves out the i in GiB since I don't have it installed (KDE here). -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Mackenzie Morgan wrote: On Sunday 31 May 2009 9:12:37 pm Christopher Chan wrote: Disk storage is expressed in multiples of 1024 under any operating system. base-10 kilobytes/kilobits/whateverbytes/whateverbits are only used by disk manufacturers (hence the 'discrepancy' between that the label on the disk says and what the operating system says) and misconceptions of certain network equipment manufacturers (eg: 100megabit/1000megabit) being base-10. Are you sure? Usually I see Windows users in #ubuntu complaining that Ubuntu only sees 112GB of their 120GB drive while Windows sees all 120GB. This then results in an explanation that no no, see Ubuntu says GiB, not GB, and that little i in there means it's Gibibytes which the IEEE has decided means 1024- based, not 1000-based which is Gigabytes and the way the manufacturer measures so that they can give you fewer Gibibytes and pretend it's just as many. Rubbish. Properties on the C: Drive of one Windows computer reports: Capacity: 62,915,133,440 bytes 58.5GB Do you want to guess what might be on the label? FYI, different disk manufacturers claiming similar amounts of disk space will actually give you different amounts of disk space. That is, not all 60GB disks are the same unless from the same manufacturer and the same model at that too. That has been the case for years and only recently have I heard this nonsense of base10 whateverbyte units in stuff other than misleading but covered my behind disk labels. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Sunday 31 May 2009 11:45:11 pm Remco wrote: On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Mackenzie Morgan maco...@gmail.com wrote: On Sunday 31 May 2009 11:15:19 pm Remco wrote: Take a look at the properties of a file in Nautilus. It will tell you a file is x MB, and y bytes. I have a file here of 701.2 MB, which is 735270912 bytes. Now, if it really *were* 701.2 MB, then it would be 70120 bytes. So that's clearly base 2, which should be MiB. I was disagreeing with the under any since AFAIK, Windows uses 1000 while Ubuntu does indeed use 1024. I'll take your word for it that Nautilus leaves out the i in GiB since I don't have it installed (KDE here). That's not the case in at least Windows XP. I just booted a VM and have a file in Windows Explorer of 742KB, which is 760748 bytes. For the same reason as my earlier Ubuntu example, this is clearly base 2, and the wrong unit. HuhI wonder why they ask that then. Maybe their partitioner / formatting thing is different *shrug*. So, what does KDE do? Crash. Any KDE users running something stable? My upgrade to Karmic seems to have broken things. -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Remco wrote: On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 3:12 AM, Christopher Chan christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk wrote: RAM comes in multiples of 1024. Network throughput is also in multiples of 1024. Disk storage is expressed in multiples of 1024 under any operating system. base-10 kilobytes/kilobits/whateverbytes/whateverbits are only used by disk manufacturers (hence the 'discrepancy' between that the label on the disk says and what the operating system says) and misconceptions of certain network equipment manufacturers (eg: 100megabit/1000megabit) being base-10. Bit rate is measured in base 10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate Okay, you are right there...bit rates and reported throughput in bytes are actually different so there is no misconception about network equipment. 1000mbits = 12.5 MB/s. I, therefore, stand by my statement that software has always (or had as it now seems that new software is no longer following conventions of the past) been base2. Each block on disk remains 512 bits (half a proper kilobyte) and so going for base-10 kilobytes requires translation while using proper kilobytes requires no translation. base-10 kilobytes/megabytes/gigabytes have no place in software. They belong solely on hard disk labels along with their footnote indicating that they are the wrong kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte definition. Base 10 is easier to calculate for humans. Try calculating the sum of 754 MiB and 1.42 GiB without using a calculator. I did not know that people care about doing that nowadays. You are bound to have left over space if you assume 1000 instead of 1024 anyway. So are you going to try to express amounts of RAM in base10 too? You are guaranteed to not have nice and easily identifiable base2 related numbers of 16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,etc and additions of those. 768MB of RAM anybody? If the conversion is done properly by Nautilus, it should be no problem. At the moment, Nautilus lies to us: it talks about MBs, while in fact they are those pesky MiBs. Stop changing age old conventions. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Sunday 31 May 2009 11:51:16 pm Christopher Chan wrote: That has been the case for years and only recently have I heard this nonsense of base10 whateverbyte units in stuff other than misleading but covered my behind disk labels. The IEEE decided nearly a decade ago that instead of redefining the SI units (which were base 10 long before the invention of digital computers), we should have our own prefixes for 1024-based numbering schemes. -- Mackenzie Morgan http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com apt-get moo signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
So, what does KDE do? Crash. Any KDE users running something stable? My upgrade to Karmic seems to have broken things. Was on Inteprid with the 4.2 backport. But I use Firefox/Thunderbird/Pidgin/OO and I can live with the odd scroll bars...not crashing on me..at least I have not encountered any yet. Kubuntu users are not at all happy with the Kubuntu team's decision to release a kubuntu with not quite ready KDE 4.x (as the KDE team themselves have clearly stated) and no choice of using the mature KDE 3.5.x desktop as recommended by the KDE team. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Mackenzie Morgan wrote: On Sunday 31 May 2009 11:51:16 pm Christopher Chan wrote: That has been the case for years and only recently have I heard this nonsense of base10 whateverbyte units in stuff other than misleading but covered my behind disk labels. The IEEE decided nearly a decade ago that instead of redefining the SI units (which were base 10 long before the invention of digital computers), we should have our own prefixes for 1024-based numbering schemes. Oh did something like that happen? Too bad no operating system before and after ever paid attention to that. Unless Ubuntu wants to be the first oddball. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 6:03 AM, Christopher Chan christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk wrote: Stop changing age old conventions. Nice. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
ma, 2009-06-01 kello 09:12 +0800, Christopher Chan kirjoitti: Take that up with the GlibC guys and/or the C/C++ standards body if you wish and I personally do not want to see any distribution specific library of such functions and the resulting distribution specific patches of packages to use that library. The point, of course, would be to do this upstream, not just in Ubuntu. Whether the free software world standardizes on base-2, base-10, or whatever-the-user-chooses, it would simplify things to have the formatting in one place, so there's only one place to configure it. Hence, the dedicated (sub)library. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Mackenzie Morgan wrote: On Monday 01 June 2009 12:13:43 am Christopher Chan wrote: So, what does KDE do? Crash. Any KDE users running something stable? My upgrade to Karmic seems to have broken things. Was on Inteprid with the 4.2 backport. But I use Firefox/Thunderbird/Pidgin/OO and I can live with the odd scroll bars...not crashing on me..at least I have not encountered any yet. Kubuntu users are not at all happy with the Kubuntu team's decision to release a kubuntu with not quite ready KDE 4.x (as the KDE team themselves have clearly stated) and no choice of using the mature KDE 3.5.x desktop as recommended by the KDE team. Recommends where? Feel free to take this up on the Kubuntu list. There was a thread on this very topic. I hereby quote what Dotan Cohen said in one of his posts: That is a distro issue, not a KDE issue. Be mad, but at *buntu, not at KDE. KDE still offers KDE 3.5.10 for download, and still calls it the more mature version: http://kde.org/download/ And note that I said *Karmic* as in, I'm running Alpha 1, not a stable release of Kubuntu. KDE 4.2.2 has been quite stable on Jaunty (*shrug* backports are never guaranteed to work). It's 4.3 (which is still in development) which is unstable. :-D There was a lot of screaming and yelling about even 4.2.3 :-D As for me, I am going to scream and yell about the lack of a kiosktool in 4.x -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu Desktop Unit Consistency (LP: #369525)
Lars Wirzenius wrote: ma, 2009-06-01 kello 09:12 +0800, Christopher Chan kirjoitti: Take that up with the GlibC guys and/or the C/C++ standards body if you wish and I personally do not want to see any distribution specific library of such functions and the resulting distribution specific patches of packages to use that library. The point, of course, would be to do this upstream, not just in Ubuntu. Phew. Whether the free software world standardizes on base-2, base-10, or whatever-the-user-chooses, it would simplify things to have the formatting in one place, so there's only one place to configure it. Hence, the dedicated (sub)library. Heh. Good luck changing du, ls, df, yada yada to anything other than base2 upstream. I guess KDE is the better desktop afterall. They are only half as mad as the GNOME chums. Time to look at ICEWM. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
