[Dapper] Timezone handling is not configured properly

See also some posts related to bug #34253.

On Bug #37383, I received the following question:

"Thanks for your bug. What do you expect from that application? You can change the /etc/default/rcS UTC= key to define if your system clock has the UTC time or the local one. Does that fix your issue? The question is not asked during the information to make it simple, so it assumes that the PC clock is set to UTC which is the default."

Since I feel that there two different issues related to this time zone scenario (one related to debian-installer, the other related to handling of time-related settings by two Gnome applets), I have posted the bug twice. Since this question is related to debian-installer, I will post my reply at this issue.

Unfortunately, the standards about the UTC setting are different in the Windows and the Unix world. Windows interprets the system clock as local time, Unix by default as UTC. Since the bios is a shared space between all operating systems installed on a computer, it is not possible to talk about a default setting. At the end of the day this is a matter of the way a machine is being used - the Windows choice is the more natural for personal workstations and departmental servers, the Unix choice makes sense for larger server installations with clients in multiple time zones. In addition, the Windows option is the more intuitive. A typical PC user (I guess that this also the Ubuntu target group) expects that his or her computer is treating time the same way than watches and cell phones (that is as local time).

Since different interpretations of the bios clock are causing all kinds of problems in dual boot configurations, there should be a possibility at installation time to define the interpretation of the system clock (possibly with a recommendation to use local time on dual boot workstations). Of cause, this is an additional choice to be made the user. However, with a good explanation and a default, this should be acceptable in particular when taking into account the problems caused by the lack of this installation options (see the timezone-related posts on ubuntuforums.org or the posts related to bug #34253).

Of cause, I can edit /etc/default/rcS. However, this is not a very good solution for several reasons:
. There is an installation option to prepare the system for dual boot with Windows. As an innocdent user, my expectation is that by selecting this installation option, everything works fine.
. This is a stealth problem. Time stamps might be set (and cause problems in applications or the operating system) before the users even notices that something unexpected might happen (actually the first warning sign is that the bios clock is changed)
- Given the target Ubuntu user, I would expect that it must be possible to get Ubuntu to work without any clue about the inner workings of Linux (the same people expect Windows to work without a need to edit the registry - indeed a reasonable request).
- Even for a person with some Linux knowledge the problem is difficult to trace down to this setting (in particular if you don't expect the existence of such a key). This timezone/change of bios problem was subject to several questions on ubuntuforums.o...

This "bug" seems to be affecting several people (including me):
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=896110#post896110 .