> On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 11:27:36AM +0000, Stuart Henderson wrote:
> > you will then end up with some of them switching to dreadful MiB etc. ;)
>
> Are there strong opinions against following standards and start
> converting to the proper terms for gigabytes (decimal, base 10, 1GB =
> 1000^3 bytes) and gibibytes (binary, base 2, 1 GiB = 1024^3 bytes)?
I have a strong opinion against it. The benefits are overstated.
I believe "When in Unix, ..."
> After all it's been a while since it was logical (!) to infer that since
> 1024^1 (kibi) is *almost* 1000^1 (kilo), then 1024^3 (gibi) must
> *almost* be 1000^3 (giga).. ;)
"Almost" has never been the problem in real life, or to bring it
closer to home -- in real system administration. The question we face
is "enough". As the capacity of equipment grows faster than the needs
for data storage, "enough" is easy to satisfy.
These new units create as much harm by requiring more comprehension
space -- ie. concern is not just about having the space, but you need
to remember which of the two units you are in, so that you don't
accidentally convert backwards once in a while. It becomes critical
to show the actual unit visibly, in every step, like in a column or on
a label.
That is a step backwards.
Disk: wd0 geometry: 155061/16/63 [156301488 Sectors]
Offset: 0 Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending LBA Info:
#: id C H S - C H S [ start: size ]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
1: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0: 0 ] unused
*3: A6 0 1 1 - 16382 15 63 [ 63: 16514001 ] OpenBSD
If the argument was about "almost enough space", now it is about "not
enough" space to put the unit letters.
> Personally I would love to see disklabel(8) default to display sizes in
> base-10 and with something like an optional -i or -2 switch to display
> information in the old (current) base 2 definition. At least it would be
> nice if it were using proper units - like GiB instead of GB.
And then we can modify the installer to ask which unit people prefer?
Not a step forward.
