this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
72 points (96.2% liked)

Linux

8249 readers
297 users here now

A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system

Also check out:

Original icon base courtesy of [email protected] and The GIMP

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The Unix epoch problem is completely unrelated to a program being 32-bit or not. The architecture affects the maximum addressable memory space, not the size of individual types. You could easily define and use a 128-bit type in a 16-bit environment, for example.

The epoch problem is simply due to a bad design call a long time ago - one that proved foundational and incredibly difficult to change once it'd become an entrenched standard. They could have made timestamps 64-bit at the time, and probably would have if they'd known their work would survive the several decades it'd take for that decision to pay off.