A set of experimental patches were sent out on Wednesday for implementing a time namespace within the kernel, part of an effort that's been going on for more than a decade around time virtualization.

These 20 patches under a "request for comments" flag allow for per-namespace offsets to the system clocks, including for monotonic and boot-time clocks.

But why have a time namespace and allowing for these clock offsets? It's mostly for container purposes. The expressed use-cases for this time namespace are for allowing the date/time to be changed within a container and for adjusting clocks for a container that have been restored from a snapshot/checkpoint.

If this interests you, learn more about this latest work on a time namespace for the Linux kernel on the kernel mailing list.