this is why i want to keep my BIOS clock set to local time, i did not do anything wrong, so just back off and quit trolling, as you can see from the screen shot the BIOS clock is NOT a 24 hour clock so keeping time in UTC/GMT format is not possible

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I just don't understand what you wrote.

Hi,

I'm pretty sure your bios operates with 24 hrs per day. The user interface presents it as two 12 hour blocks labelled as AM and PM, presumably because it was assumed this format would be more familiar to the user. It also uses a strange order for the year, month and day imnsho ;-).

I don't understand how the way the bios presents this information is an argument for setting it to a local timezone instead of a globally accepted standard that all POSIX like OSs normally use.

Evo2

If you are running only linux then it actually makes sense to set the hardware clocks to UTC. The system clock is always UTC regardless of time zone setting. When the system boots it uses the hardware clock setting in /etc/adjtime (LOCAL OR UTC) to set the system clock and shutdown updates the hardware clock based upon the same setting. If the configuration setting is not correct the hardware clock is changed by the UTC timezone offset.

Many distribution installers timezone configuration setting have a UTC/LOCAL checkbox that defaults to UTC but it depends on the distribution.

if it was up to me all BIOS clocks would be set to UTC/GMT but i dont write BIOS firmware so i dont have a say in it, so i have to try to accommodate what is available on the PC i have, this PC with the 12 hour BIOS clock is a Dell Optiplex 7010 and yes it should have a 24 hour clock then switching it to UTC/GMT would not be a problem, too bad Dell does not have an alternative firmware with a 24 hour clock for it or i would switch it over

Hi,

I don't understand how/why you think it has a "12 hour BIOS clock". The screenshot you linked to shows an option to set am or pm. What happens if you set it to the correct UTC time and then configure your OS time settings accordingly?

Evo2

I agree that how time is displayed in the BIOS is not how it stored in the clock memory and 12/24 format works the same for any timezone.

regardless of any BIOS clock format, what i want to see is the option to tell any Linux installer program to NOT TOUCH THE BIOS clock, remember do no evil? that is one of them, i have my reasons and i dont want any Linux distro to touch the BIOS clock

the only time i want the software to change the BIOS clock is when i am ready to do that and i usually do that with NTP and i wont be doing that during the install of a distro,

so I posted a link (on tldp) which explains how it was designed to work and what tools can be used to set it.
To set the hw clock is acceptable for a lot of people it is not so extreme. Your approach is different. But I'm afraid timezone is unconditionally set during installation. You can have your own install image where you skip this step, but in general it is quite useful.

Kudos to Crux-3.5 i just installed it and it did not change the BIOS clock, it is okay with me if the distro displays the wrong time, i just want to keep the BIOS clock at the time i set it, i dont want distros volunteering to change it for me during the install

i have a clock on the wall that keeps time with radio signals from WWV

I found it, it is /etc/adjtime it seems no matter if i select utc or local time it always gets set to UTC so apps like NTP will sync with time servers, but it throws off my BIOS clock

it seems no matter what i tell the installer my preferred clock format either UTC or local time, it always sets the /etc/adjtime to UTC, i guess it assumes i have a 24 hour clock in the BIOS on this PC, but it does not, it has a 12 hour clock with an AM/PM setting on the right side after the seconds, so instead of going to 13 it goes back around to 1 (as all 12 hour clocks do) so to solve this problem, i just copy my /etc/adjtime file over to the offending distro overwriting the original and it sets the clock correctly

so the problem is not with what the local timezone is set, it is how the operating system sees the BIOS clock,