Timezone.. Incorrect?

I have set my timezone on my laptop (EndeavourOS) and after switching from windows I have had a large amount of confusion on why my time was FAR off of correct. I went into my settings and changed my timezone to my best fit which was something along the lines of “British United Kingdom” (I’m In England) But the time is still an hour ahead?? Is there any way to set it to local time or a custom timezone?

Welcome @eepyefan :wave: :sunglasses: :enos_flag:

It’s a bit of a pain. I don’t experience it so much with Windows, but with grabbing photos off my DSLR and audio off my portable sound recorder. I might have just generated some media, but under Linux, the files show up as being created “Yesterday”, even though date and time on all devices is the same :crazy_face:

The issue stems from UTC vs localtime. You might count yourself lucky you’re only an hour out. I live in a UTC+11 timezone :sweat_smile:

The Wiki says this about getting date/time to behave with a Windows dual boot:
Arch Wiki > System Time > 4.1 UTC in Microsoft Windows

To dual boot with Windows, it is recommended to configure Windows to use UTC, rather than Linux to use localtime. (Windows by default uses localtime [2].)

It can be done by a simple registry fix: Open regedit and add a DWORD value with hexadecimal value 1 to the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\RealTimeIsUniversal

Follow the link for further details…

On dual boot i set EOS to local time. Then correct the time on Windows and should be fine booting back and forth. I’m not sure how this works in other time zones but that is the way i set it.

Check

timedatectl status

Set

timedatectl set-local-rtc 1

Also in my experience if you did a Windows update then went into EOS I’ve seen Windows viciously mug the linux time and modem quite often. That’s why I never kept them on the same drive ever again.
short version is check systemctl

2 solutions in that one. I did the systemctl one. The Real solution is “You gotta keep 'em separated” meaning Win and Whatever on same disk

two cents, maybe one here

Usually I configure Windows to respect the Unix approach to time. With some Registry settings Windows works fine with the RTC set to UTC.

The thing is, I don’t dual boot,Although I recently switched from windows I fully wiped the disk (I believe). Do you think this may be affecting it and will I need to fully clean / reformat the disk and use ventoy to reinstall It with no traces of windows?

Ah, a misunderstanding then. I mistakenly thought this was alluding to a dual-boot setup…

As @ricklinux noted, you can use this to check your currently defined timezone:

timedatectl status

Might you share the output of that?

That’s what i thought also? But anyway i know what the Arch wiki say’s:

To dual boot with Windows, it is recommended to configure Windows to use UTC, rather than Linux to use local time. Windows by default uses local time.

I have never set Windows to UTC. I always have set Linux to local time and not had any issue. :person_shrugging:

Anyway i guess the OP isn’t dual booting so not sure why the time is off unless the system clock isn’t synchronized with NTP service active?

This is my out put on a single install of EOS.

[ricklinux@rick-ms7c37 ~]$ timedatectl status
               Local time: Mon 2024-10-14 11:27:37 EDT
           Universal time: Mon 2024-10-14 15:27:37 UTC
                 RTC time: Mon 2024-10-14 15:27:37
                Time zone: America/Toronto (EDT, -0400)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no