[$] Approaching the kernel year-2038 end game In January 2038, the 32-bit
time_t value used on many Unix-like
systems will run out of bits and be unable to represent the current time.
This may seem like a distant problem, but, as Tom Scott recently
observed,
the year-2038 apocalypse is now closer to the present than the year-2000
problem. The fact that systems being deployed now will still be operating
in 2038 adds urgency to the issue as well.
The good news is that work has been underway for years to prepare
Linux for this date, so there should be no need to call developers out of
retirement in 2037 in a last-minute panic. Some of the final steps in this
transition for the core kernel have been posted, and seem likely to be
merged for 5.1.