On Fri, Dec 22, 2023 at 07:26:37PM +0700, Max Nikulin wrote:
> On 21/12/2023 21:53, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 09:08:09AM -0500, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > 
> > > And
> > > it is quite possible on a few of those machines to have multiple
> > > desktop users, each from a different TZ.
> > 
> > I've sometimes the impression that desktop environments are losing
> > the concept pf multi-user operating systems and are regreding to
> > something like Windows 95.
> 
> Tomas, I do not see you point and I feel like my messages may cause some
> sort of confusion.

I'm easily confused, that happens. So thanks for your patience :-)
In any case, no offense intended, and much less to you.

> POSIX and libc have some shortcomings, but they are not unique to desktop
> environments and applicable to window manager sessions and even to
> standalone applications.

I know.

> /etc/localtime is a global setting. Its change may affect all users not
> having explicit TZ. Something better than libc is required for an
> application (especially multithread one) that need to deal with time in
> multiple time zones.

Yes. Libc's (POSIX, for that) interface is pretty bad. It effectively
limits one to one time zone per libc instance.

> Systemd, from my point of view, does not make it worse. It just allows e.g.
> firefox to subscribe to timezone change events instead of adding explicit
> support of /etc/localtime and inotify handlers.

I think it's more a perception thing. People are tempted to believe "the
operating system has a timezone", whereas /etc/timezone [1] is just the
global default for the (libc) applications to fall back to whenever they
don't have specified one.

> I am in doubts if Linux ever was more "multiuser" in respect to timezones.

It is definitely more multiuser than the Windows95 it is trying to
emulate these days (yes, a bit of hyperbole, but hey).

Cheers

[1] Or whatever that thing may be called in systemd-land.
> 
> 

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