What Is the Unix Epoch, and How Does Unix Time Work?

And that means Linux does too. We explain this seemingly odd system, and why doomsday was scheduled for 2038. Goethe (1749-1832) declared "Every second is of infinite value." That's true, we each only have so many seconds here on planet Earth, and we don't know when our last second will be. But we do know our birthday, and when our mortal countdown started.