On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 14:16:14 -0500, Nicholas Geovanis wrote: > > > <https://wiki.debian.org/DateTime>. > > Reading the link that Walton sent, the only case where RTC clock in UTC is > recommended is in the linux/windows dual-boot case. There's no statement > that RTC should be set to UTC besides that. And they say right there why it > isn't mentioned: your Debian machine might move around geographically. But > if it doesnt.... > > Servers in data centers don't move around, they just sit there :-) So in my > experience servers running anything non-windows have RTC set to local time. > That's been on Red Hat/CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu.
If your system only boots one operating system, and never changes its default time zone, then it makes no difference whether the RTC is set to UTC or local time. The OS will use the same assumptions when reading and writing to the RTC, so everything will remain correct. If you boot multiple operating systems, or if you ever change your default time zone, then keeping the RTC in UTC gives you a much better chance of things remaining correct. And of course, if your system is configured to retrieve the correct time from NTP servers immediately after booting, then the RTC's contents don't really matter much in the first place. You'd only "use" the RTC for the brief time between boot and NTP synchronization, or if for some reason you can't reach your NTP servers (Internet is down or whatever).
