uses unusual units to report memory and disk sizes

Thanks for your suggestion. The changes you are requesting require more discussion, which should be done on an appropriate mailing list or forum. [WWW] http://www.ubuntu.com/community/forums/ might be a good start.

That's better to have desktop apps coherent between them, thank you for the patch, that's fixed with that upload:
 gnome-system-monitor (2.17.5-0ubuntu2) feisty; urgency=low
 .
   * debian/patches/80_use_units_coherent_with_gnome_desktop.patch:
     - make units used coherent with the other apps from the GNOME desktop,
       patch by Christian Persch (Ubuntu: #80780)

Reopening.

This was reverted a while ago with this comment:

gnome-system-monitor (2.22.1-1) unstable; urgency=low
[...]
  * debian/patches/series:
    + 80_use_units_coherent_with_gnome_desktop.patch:
      - Disable this one as gvfs uses kibibytes, etc too now.

This is not true. gvfs uses 1024-based units, but labels them kB, MB, etc. gnome-system-monitor is now again inconsistent with the desktop.

System Monitor uses the correct units. The bug is in GVFS, not System Monitor. The K = 1024 convention is unfamiliar to users (especially in metric countries), and it is officially deprecated. See the Linux Programmer's Manual for an explanation. (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man7/units.html)

The above patch would make System Monitor inconsistent with other Ubuntu apps that use correct units, like Partition Manager, Pidgin, Synaptic, P2P clients, Bazaar/Launchpad, ... Please close this as invalid and fix GVFS.

You're wrong. See upstream GNOME bug http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=512443 . Only a few GNOME module maintainers think they know better and make the desktop inconsistent by insisting on using these unusual units.

right, that's a bug, there is currently bug #269204 open about the issue

I didn't try to patch yet but it reverts the change for displaying coherent units described on http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=418181?

wrong bug number, that was rather bug #214781 which has been marked duplicate, reopening this one

It seems that GNOME has not formally decided which set of units to use. From my perspective, the desktop should foremost be consistent. If necessary, we should change System Monitor for now until GNOME makes up its mind (which should be happening soon: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2008-August/msg00097.html)

I don't think we should be patching anything when that patch is wrong and results in user confusion. System Monitor is currently consistent with at least a subset of apps that will be used in conjunction with it.

If Ubuntu's going to be in the business of patching packages against the wishes of the upstream maintainer, patch GVFS to make it use units that users are familiar with; don't perpetuate a problem for the sake of "consistency".

Yeah, I do agree with Endolith. This is bigger than just System Monitor and GVFS.

Ubuntu needs to decide which set of units to use, and it needs to stick to it for all apps across the entire system.

I vote for the international standard (1000-byte kB), personally, rather than the Microsoft/legacy standard (1024-byte kB).

Perhaps the next step should be a blueprint to this effect.

I created a blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-unit-consistency

the units to use has already been discussed on the lists, the bug tracker is a wrong place for such discussions

It's been discussed several times in different places, and there is a general agreement to use the standard units and stop confusing our users. You'll notice that chpe's patch on this thread is reported as "1.1 KiB", for instance.

Here are at least 130 other Ubuntu users who also vote to follow the standard: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4114/ Please don't apply patches that make things worse only for Ubuntu users.

We have now the units policy [1] in place and g_format_size_for_display() is fixed to comply with it. The attached patch will make gnome-system-monitor to use g_format_size_for_display().

There are some remaining issues:
1. System -> Memory should be in base-2.
2. Resources -> Network History should be in base-10 (KB/s is wrong!)
3. Should we present Processes -> Memory and Resources -> Memory in base-2?

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy

Developers should note that Ubuntu's fork of g_format_size_for_display() has been reverted. For details see Bug #538783.

My patch should be stalled until we have a solution for g_format_size_for_display(). It will probably be either a new set of function or a separate library.

Marking as 'patch-rejected' for the time being to keep this off the Ubuntu Review team radar. Once the above issue is resolved and the patch can move forward, please remove the 'patch-rejected' tag. Thanks alot!

I realize that this bug report is, according to the title, only about memory and disk sizes, but comment #19 above mentions that network throughput uses "KB/s" (in the tooltip) and I would like to point out that this is indeed contrary to Ubuntu policy and the bug still exists in Ubuntu 10.10. According to Ubuntu policy (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy), "kilobytes" should be symbolized "kB".

I was about to make this comment at #366235, since that began as a report about "incorrect network speed (throughput) units", but the latter has been assigned to gnome-bugs #580471 where the discussion has sidetracked into the question of whether the average user prefers to see throughput measurements in bits or bytes, and into other questions.

Perhaps the decision whether to report bits or bytes can be left to upstream; but let Ubuntu make sure that the symbols used always follow Ubuntu standards.

g-s-m currently uses consistently SI units. The discussion at upstream has stalled. I'm changing the status to ``opinion''.