Setting Date and Time Automatically

Ask Fedora
1

Hey guys, finally had a chance to try Fedora KDE Plasma. I have gone through the install process offline since the installer did not have asked for a network connection. The installer told me that it was able to setup NTP connection for the Fedora NTP server; however, the timezone it set was wrong. When I completed the install and booted to the installed OS and connected to WIFI, it still shows the time wrong, which I assume is from timezone still being wrong. Is there a way to set timezone automatically from my location? Is this an issue with the NTP?

2

You can set the Time Zone in System Settings.

Language and Time->Date & Time->TIme Zone

NTP synchronizes the clock itself but if the timezone is wrong it will still display the wrong time.

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3

Don’t assume. See: https://linuxconfig.org/system-clock-vs-hardware-clock-on-linux. Using Fedora43 Terminal:

sudo hwclock
[sudo: authenticate] Password: 
2026-02-02 07:50:12.869327-04:00
% date
Mon 02 Feb 2026 07:36:31 AM AST

Where AST is Atlantic Standard Time. If your hardware time is wrong on next power off restart, check the CMOS battery (one of my systems recently restarted with hwclock set to the last second of 1969) — probably time for dusting and a new CMOS battery!

4

FYI timedatectl does this and more to show the state of time without the need for privs.

timedatectl
               Local time: Mon 2026-02-02 15:22:15 GMT
           Universal time: Mon 2026-02-02 15:22:15 UTC
                 RTC time: Mon 2026-02-02 15:22:15
                Time zone: Europe/London (GMT, +0000)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no
5

Thanks for all the replies and clarification on NTP not being about timezones. It turns out, KDE has the functionality to sync timezone automatically, based on location. I am leaving the guide for it for others who are interested.

Link: KDE Plasma Automatic Time Zone - LinuxJedi’s /dev/null

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