Unix Epoch should have started in 2000, not 1970.

Those selfish people in the 1970 who made up the Unix epoch had little regard for the future. Thanks to their selfishness, the Unix date range is 1902 to 2038 with a 2³² integer. Honestly, who needs dates from 1902 to 1970 these days? Or even to 1990? Perhaps some ancient CD-ROMs have 1990s file name dates, but after that?
Now we have an impending year 2038 problem that could have been delayed by 30 years.

If it started on 2000-01-01, Unix epoch would be the number of seconds past since the century and millennium.

Yeah, and in the 30 years until 2000, they would have had a problem with past dates. Also, they had 68 years to solve the problem, more than enough - and indeed, it is solved, because Unix systems use a 64 bit type for time_t.

@Fast-Nop Even on 64-bit systems, some software like calendar applets sometimes end in 2038. All ext2 and ext3 file systems will need to have been upgraded. Since smartphones with user-replaceable batteries are almost not produced at all, operating systems of most remaining phones with user-replaceable batteries will be crippled in 16 years.

Those silly dumb STUPID people of 1970. I can't believe how selfish and stupid they were.

This is hilarious, I approve.

Or maybe they should have declared that the year 1970 is in fact the year 2000.

@exerceo The applets have 16 years to get updated, ext2/ext3 systems are unlikely to be around by then because not even Redhat supports distros that long, smartphones with user-replaceable batteries have been out of fashion for many years, and even if some old one should survive, it will not be able to log into the mobile networks with the radio standards in 2038.

> Those selfish people in the 1970

Written by NOT selfish people in 2022, bcz who cares about people in 3055, right?

@Fast-Nop "fashion" does not matter. Utility does.

@exerceo My laptop has even both: fairly easy to replace battery after taking the bottom off with standard tools, and a flexible charge controller that I can configure not to cram the battery to 100%. Plus that it runs Mint 21 that has 64 bit time and ext4.

Honestly...

If you manage to keep a hard drive intact with ext2/ext3 since 1970.... Or even 2000 ....

Till 2038.

I think you are trying to make a point deliberately and went full retard.

Filesystems evolve.

No filesystem version is changed lightly, but as algorithms and possibilities evolve, they get changed.

Same for physical interfaces.

We had SATA for a while now, but I absolutely believe it will become rare or even die out in the next century, given that PCI-X evolves very fast and CXL is on the horizon.

So in either way it's unlikely a filesystem or harddrive survives that long. Even SSDs have a shorter lifetime despite they have no mechanical parts.

There is one mistake in design that is made lightly and that is paid by huge sacrifices.

It's called over anticipation.

Sure, they could have made a 64 bit integer by dirty pointer arithmetics back then.

It would have done no good.

Performance, maintenance, testing.... It would have been all for worse.

Just to fix a problem that was far off in the future.

My birthday is pre 2k, just saying.

@catgirldev 292 million years. how about people living in 293 million years from now.

@exerceo why the hell are you still using ext2 for anything?

@evertiro I'm not using it for new things. Let's hope ext2 drivers do not crash after 2038 when reading existing disk images and real disks if they survive until then.