Debian Takes Proactive Steps to Address Year 2038 Problem
Even though 2038 might seem distant, recent updates from the Debian development team reveal their active efforts to address the infamous ‘Year 2038 Problem’.
However, before delving deeper, it’s important to explain exactly what this issue entails to our audience.
The ‘Year 2038 Problem,’ also known as the Y2K38 or the Unix Millennium Bug, is a potential computing issue expected to affect computer systems on or after January 19, 2038.
It arises because many of them use a time format that counts the number of seconds since the Unix epoch (00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970) and stores this value as a signed 32-bit integer. However, the maximum value that a signed 32-bit integer can represent is 2,147,483,647 (2^31 – 1).