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From: RonB <ronb02NOSPAM@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Does Dimdows Know What Time It Is?
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2024 06:34:55 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2024-09-30, CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> wrote:
> On 2024-09-29 2:59 p.m., DFS wrote:
>> On 9/28/2024 6:40 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> Something Unix did that was different from most other OSes was, its 
>>> system
>>> clock kept time in UTC (or GMT, in pre-UTC days). Linux does the same.
>>> When you use a command like “date” to see what the current date and time
>>> is, it converts that UTC time to a local time in some specified timezone.
>>> Changing the timezone is as easy as specifying a new value for the TZ
>>> environment variable.
>>>
>>> Windows, on the other hand, keeps its system clock in local time, in some
>>> specific time zone that is assumed to apply systemwide.
>>>
>>> This is a particularly dumb idea when you realize how much it complicates
>>> things if your time zone has daylight saving time. We have seen this sort
>>> of thing happen on Windows systems before, where they might forget to
>>> adjust the clock to start/stop daylight saving, or even adjust it 
>>> twice so
>>> you end up being an hour off in the opposite direction.
>>>
>>> This can’t happen on Linux systems, because there is no turning daylight
>>> saving “on” or “off” as such: there is simply a table of local time
>>> offsets (from the “tzdata” files), and the correct offset to apply 
>>> depends
>>> only on the actual UTC time value, not on the current setting of any
>>> system flag.
>>>
>>> This also makes it easy to convert between UTC and local times at any 
>>> time
>>> in the past, for any time zone.
>> 
>> 
>> I NEVER trust Linux to keep time.  I've encountered several occurrences 
>> of it dropping 5-7 minutes over a 1-hour period.
>> 
>> 
>> * user error
>> * Linux is just the kernel
>> * RTFM newb
>> * Linux is perfect
>> * you're lying
>> * works for me
>> * you have the source code, fix it yourself
>
> That's actually pretty sad if it was configured to synchronize with a 
> time server. I don't recall it ever happening to me, but stranger things 
> have happened.

I've never had any issues with Linux keeping time, my Linux computers 
automatically change on cue with my cell phones. But I just do the standard 
install, I don't screw around with it. And it handles daylight savings time 
changes on its own. Maybe DuFuS's choice of NTP servers suck. He seems to 
have a lot of trouble with Linux that no one else ever has. You have to work 
pretty hard on Linux to get it to NOT work. It looks like DuFuS puts in that 
needed time.

-- 
“Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy 
what has been invented or made by the forces of good.”  —J.R.R. Tolkien