Penguin
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An Acronym for Universale Temps Coordinee, ie Coordinated Universal Time.

This is the standard time zone all other time zones are based on. It replaced GMT in the early 1970s. UTC is measured with atomic clocks. It is kept within 0.9 seconds of TAI, but with an integral number of leap seconds added occasionally to reflect the season at and location on the planet. This way UTC stays in sync with the rotation of the earth, making sure midnight always occurs at the same time relative to the stars.

To date all corrections have been positive to account for the tidal drag on the earth which slows the planet down.

For more information see http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/systime.html

Compare GMT, TAI.


Unix systems and cousins traditionally store times as UTC, and only convert it to the local timezone for display using the system's settings. On a typical Linux operating system, /etc/timezone contains the time zone (such as Pacific/Auckland), and /etc/localtime is a SymLink to a binary file containing information on your standard offset, your daylight savings offset, and how to calculate when daylight savings is in effect. F.ex,

/etc $ ls -l localtime lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 Apr 22 00:19 localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Pacific/Auckland

You can use the tzselect(1)? program (as root) to change these settings.

Also, /etc/default/rcS (AddToMe: not on Slackware; which distro?) contains a UTC variable to tell your Kernel whether or not your hardware clock is set to UTC or to your localtime. Setting UTC=yes and having your hardware clock running in UTC is generally a good idea.

For more about setting up your machine's clock, see HowToClock? and NTP.