Current Time Zones in any Country

The measurement of time is based on the most natural and regular event: the alternating periods of day and night resulting from the rotation of the earth. The total time formed by these two consecutive periods is constant. Only the length of day and night changes. Another constant is noon.

Noon is when the Sun is at its highest point. Since the world is round, it is noon at different times in different regions. This gave rise to the concept of local time. People measure time in many units, many of which depend on the natural phenomenon of "noon". It doesn't matter what the local time is as long as you are in the same place.

As soon as the need to communicate with distant places arises, you will understand the necessity of the general concept of time. In modern times, many parts of the world are in communication with other places and therefore a global standard for measuring time has been defined. This time is called universal time (UT or UTC - universal time, officially Greenwich Mean Time, GMT because it is adjusted to the local time of the Greenwich area in England). When people with different local times need to communicate with each other, they convert the time to universal time, thus revealing what needs to be done and when.

Each local time is called a time zone. While geographical conditions allow using the same time zone in places where it is noon at the same time, policies make this difficult. For a variety of reasons, many countries use summer time. This means they set their clocks forward to get more natural light while working, and when winter comes they put them back. Other countries do not do this. Those who do can't agree on when the clocks should be changed and change the rules every year. This makes the change of time zones very trivial.

Time zones are best named according to locality or by saying the difference from universal time. In the US and some other countries, local times have names and three-letter abbreviations. Abbreviations are not unique and should not be used without specifying the country name. It is best to say Helsinki, Eastern Europe when speaking. Because not all Eastern European countries use the same rules.

Linux has a timezones package, thanks to which it knows all existing timezones and can be easily updated if necessary. All system administrators have to choose the time zone that suits them. In addition, users can set their own time settings, which will be especially convenient for people who work on a single computer over the Internet but live in different countries. Be sure to update at least this part of the Linux system whenever the daylight saving time rules used in your time zone change. Other than setting and updating the system timezone, there are very few situations where you need to worry about time.

Current local time of all countries in the world