Sitemap
OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Follow publication

The Largely Untold Story Of How One Guy In California Keeps The World’s Computers Running On The Right Time Zone. (Well, Sort Of)

14 min readOct 3, 2021

--

The next time your Linux or MacOS-based computer boots into the perfect time zone, say a mental thank you to Paul Eggert and the team responsible for maintaining the world time zone computer database. Photo by Pixabay from Pexels
If you ever want to know what time zone your computer is configured to in Ubuntu Linux, you can run the ‘timedatectl’ command form the terminal. Screenshot: author.

Meet Paul Eggert. The Incumbent Time Zone Coordinator. (TZC). And Where The Buck Totally Stops When Nations Pull Surprise DST Changes. Oh, And Whose Database May Very Well Be Sitting Somewhere On Your Hard Drive.

Paul Eggert, a computer scientist who has led efforts to coordinate time zones on computers for a number of years. Screenshot: UCLA CS department website.

--

--

OneZero
OneZero

Published in OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Daniel Rosehill
Daniel Rosehill

Written by Daniel Rosehill

Daytime: writing for other people. Nighttime: writing for me. Or the other way round. Enjoys: Linux, tech, beer, random things. https://www.danielrosehill.com

Responses (16)