Is it possible to display byte prefixes correctly (as multiples of 1024)?

[nokangaroo]

I am using Ubuntu precise LXDE with caja as file manager. It works perfectly, the only problem is that file sizes are displayed as decimal bytes (1 GB = 1000 MB), which is wrong and confusing (should be 1024 MiB, and most applications display them that way). Is it possible to change this? And is the relevant code in caja at all, or somewhere in Ubuntu? I hear it is Ubuntu's policy to switch to decimal bytes, in which case I may not be able to do anything (which is not linuxlike at all).

[stefano-k]

this is from glib
http://developer.gnome.org/glib/2.30/glib-Miscellaneous-Utility-Functions.html#g-format-size

The prefix units base is 1000 (i.e. 1 kB is 1000 bytes).

Use of 1024 prefix units base is discouraged:

G_FORMAT_SIZE_IEC_UNITS: use IEC (base 1024) units with "KiB"-style suffixes. IEC units should only be used for reporting things with a strong "power of 2" basis, like RAM sizes or RAID stripe sizes. Network and storage sizes should be reported in the normal SI units.

[szesch]

In addition to what stefano-k said, it's also an Ubuntu policy. For these reasons, we will stick with the current conventions that are inherited from glib.

For the record, I do agree with you that it's confusing.

[oliver-joos]

Well: "MATE is a fork of GNOME, but it's not GNOME" ;-)
Please consider my proposal in issue #83.