Re: tzdata-legacy [was: Re: systemd and timezone]
On Sat 06 Jan 2024 at 02:57:53 (-0600), Nate Bargmann wrote:
> * On 2024 06 Jan 01:00 -0600, Max Nikulin wrote:
> > US/Eastern & Co has been moved to tzdata-legacy as well. Currently used
> > identifiers are based on cities: America/New_York.
>
> Ugghhh!
>
> I guess I'll be going to the legacy package then until
> $WHOEVER_IS_IN_CHARGE issues a decree that it too shall be eliminated.
> I really don't get the fascination with some city hundreds of miles
> distant defining the time zone.
Until fairly recently there wasn't a $WHOEVER_IS_IN_CHARGE to issue
the decree as Congress now does. A lot of the rules were made locally.
> Why Chicago for US/Central? There are
> any number of cities in US/Central that could be referenced, but no,
> pick the most notorious one--rolls eyes.
I don't know what your problem is with Chicago: it's merely the
largest city in the area covered by the timezone.
> I could even accept America/Central without complaint. Yeah, US is a
> directory and Central is a symlink to ../America/Chicago that could be
> manually added to a system if need be.
States still have the right to decide whether to observe DST, just
so long as any clock changes occur at the same time as everybody
else. So it's conceivable that Texas could, for example, decide
changing clocks is a waste of effort, and stay on one or the other
all year. In which case, it's a simple matter to cater for that
with the addition of an America/Houston timezone.
Impossible to do that with America/Central; I think it's long overdue
to recognise these old names as a legacy of earlier attempts to
specify time zones. Historically, some of them (like Eastern) don't
work anyway. Also it's doubly unfortunate, for non-Americans, that
there's a region of the world called Central America.
> Ambles off shaking fist at a cloud...
Cheers,
David.
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