Understanding gibibytes versus gigabytes and mebibytes versus megabytes

While learning more about Linux, you may become confused about some terminology you're likely to find relating to storage devices. In the field, most people refer to data sizes as megabytes, gigabytes, and so on. While this is also true of Linux, you may see other terms, such as mebibytes and gibibytes, used to describe data sizes as well,. So, what's the deal?

First, it's important to understand that the storage measurement terms you're probably accustomed to, such as megabyte (MB) and gigabyte (GB), are part of the International System of Units (SI). This is a standard form of measurement for scientific data that has been used for quite some time. Typical words in the SI system include kilo, mega, giga, and others. Therefore, when the SI system is applied to computer storage (bytes), we get kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, and so on.

However, there was a bit of error when applying the SI system to measuring computer storage...