Ubuntu's future 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system is going to make a small, but contentious change to how
file sizes are represented. Like most other operating systems using
binary prefixes, Ubuntu currently represents 1 kB (kilobyte) as 1024 bytes (base-2). But starting with Lucid Lynx 10.10, the operating system will be switching from IEC units (base-2) to
SI units (base-10) that will denote
1 kB as 1,000 bytes,
1 MB as 1,000 kB / 1,000,000 bytes,
1 GB as 1,000 MB / 1,000,000 kB / 1,000,000,000 bytes, and so on.
It was originally thought that the change over to SI units would happen with 10.04 Lucid Lynx, but it has been delayed to Lucid+1 (10.10) since some programs have failed to update to the new units policy and were still using base-2
The ancient Greeks did not count in binary (base-2) and this new counting will finally put them in line with the standard Greek meaning of "kilo" as 1000.
This is a move already undertaken by other operating systems including
Mac 10.6 Snow Leopard.
