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General discussionWhy does MINT use mebibityes in the system monitor?(24 posts)(24 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 19, 2018
WTF? Why not just use megabytes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
Posted October 19, 2018
Well mebibytes are more useful. Besides, people have been using them and mislabeling them as megabytes for years.
Post edited October 19, 2018 by SirPrimalform
Posted October 19, 2018
When I was young, those new terms (MiB, GiB etc) were not invented yet. I just keep using the words I learnt while studying.

For those terms to have been invented, there must have been a need. For them to be truly useful, people must learn to use them or at least understand. Somebody has to start using them for them to catch on.

According to new standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebibyte
Posted October 19, 2018
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SirPrimalform: Well mebibytes are more useful. Besides, people have been using them and mislabeling them as megabytes for years.
They are not mislabeling.
KB, MB, was always used since the computer born.
KiB, MiB are much much newer units, and only geeks know what they are.
Posted October 19, 2018
That is weird. I would have thought they would use gibibytes and tebibytes. Unless you've got Mint on a very small partition?

Hmm, doesn't Linux use ext4 or something? Does that version still require partitioning? It can handle gibibytes, right?

I've yet to figure out how to get Linux on my Mac hardware without VMs. Especially ever since macOS converted the filesystem to APFS (no partitions needed anymore), because that's probably unreadable from other OSes if I were to ever get one installed to boot from it. No mebibytes or other from the OS for me anytime soon.

On the other hand, even in emacs I have dired (DIRectory EDit) displaying the whole number for a file size, without such units. I like knowing how few bytes changed compared to their "~" backup files, whether decreasing or increasing; it reminds me of what I did recently. Otherwise, the sizes would look the same with bytes truncated to show kibibytes, or kibibytes truncated to show mebibytes (f.e. PDF files).

Oh wait, I do get to see those units with "df -h" as Ki, Mi, Gi. Though "du -h" only uses K, M, G even though it says it's counting by 1024.
Posted October 19, 2018
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flatiron: WTF? Why not just use megabytes?
Because it's less ambiguous - and now also standardized as such. To be honest this is mainly the fault of hard drive manufacturers which have shunted the 1k = 1024 rule and went for 1k = 1000 in the interest of marketing/saving cost.

P.S.: And it's not a Mint thing - it's a Mate/Cinnamon thing. Also Gparted and other partitioning tools have been using MiBs/GiBs for some time now.
Post edited October 19, 2018 by WinterSnowfall
Posted October 19, 2018
A megabyte is widely accepted as referring to 1000000, 1024000 or 1048576 bytes. On a system monitor, any of those is a plausible interpretation, so the first thing anyone looking at some number of megabytes will ask is "what kind of megabyte?". The most straightforward way of clarifying is to use the symbol MiB instead of MB so that there is no ambiguity in the first place, which happens to be exactly what the term and symbol for "mebibyte" were created for.
Posted October 19, 2018
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SirPrimalform: Well mebibytes are more useful. Besides, people have been using them and mislabeling them as megabytes for years.
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kbnrylaec: They are not mislabeling.
KB, MB, was always used since the computer born.
KiB, MiB are much much newer units, and only geeks know what they are.
My point is that before the invention of those units, some people were defining a megabyte as 1024 KB.

"The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 1998.[2] It was designed to replace the megabyte when used in the binary sense to mean 2^20 bytes, which conflicts with the definition of the prefix mega in the International System of Units (SI) as a multiplier of 10^6."

EDIT: Barefoot Monkey has covered this better than me.
Post edited October 19, 2018 by SirPrimalform
Posted October 19, 2018
It doesn't do to have a measuring standard with multiple interpretations. Time to fully adopt the new standard I think, and strip the older definition back to one meaning.

The devil take these ambiguous definitions!
Posted October 19, 2018
Let me just put this here.

Yes, you're seeing it: a keyboard made of mint chocolate.
Posted October 19, 2018
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tinyE:
I could never eat that. It has no function keys!
Posted October 19, 2018
You know, if we all would just make sure files stay under a 1000 bytes, then we'd never need any prefixed units. Or under 1,000,000 bytes collectively for a disk. Six digits aren't that many, so nevermind obscuring the size.

Especially trim down the operating systems. They don't even do anything more than the 20th century computers, they must be mostly bloat.
Posted October 19, 2018
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thomq: Especially trim down the operating systems. They don't even do anything more than the 20th century computers, they must be mostly bloat.
Some supercomputers already have over one petabyte RAM.
They do much much more things than the 20th century supercomputers.
Post edited October 19, 2018 by kbnrylaec
Posted October 19, 2018
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thomq: Especially trim down the operating systems. They don't even do anything more than the 20th century computers, they must be mostly bloat.
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kbnrylaec: Some supercomputers already have over one petabyte RAM.
They do much much more things than the 20th century supercomputers.
Great...
Other people other than me and other than anyone I personally know, with computers other than the computer I have or the computers anyone I know has. Same operating system? Tasks that the everyday person wants done? Or are you going get all "saving the world" on me?
I'm talking about real life, not a bunch of navel-gazing researchers.

Really. Who needs more than 1024Ki? Or, okay, anything more than a 1.44MB floppy disk? I mean for everyday life.

EDIT:
I guess operating systems might need a little more, but why? Has the hardware gotten that bad in needing management? Couldn't they make hardware circuits to do the managing of the hardware rather than so much software shaped into these operating systems we have nowadays (compared to pre-2001)?

What is an operating system doing that we need so much storage space for the operating system? macOS 10.14 is about 12GB as a fresh install. I'll never have that much stuff of my own on a computer. Other software like applications (f.e. games), sure. But that I write or make, like notes or emails? Never. It's like driving a three-trailier semi-truck just to get from the living room to the kitchen, instead of just putting on a pair slippers and shuffling to make snack.
Post edited October 19, 2018 by thomq
Posted October 19, 2018
Mebibyte sounds like you found a questionable sandwich in your fridge. It's not a must bite, or must not bite, it's a mebibyte.
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General discussionWhy does MINT use mebibityes in the system monitor?(24 posts)(24 posts)
(24 posts)