How to change system timezone in Ubuntu

Timezone is set during system installation for Ubuntu. It automatically selects the timezone based on your current location though you can choose any timezone from the list for your system.

You can still change the timezone of your Ubuntu system after installation. There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest is to update the softlink of /etc/localtime to the correct timezone file in /usr/share/zoneinfo. The method also works in other Linux distributions and can be done from the terminal.

1. Launch terminal.
2. Check currently used timezone using timedatectl.

   $ timedatectl                Local time: Jum 2020-08-21 09:30:04 +08               Universal time: Jum 2020-08-21 01:30:04 UTC                     RTC time: Jum 2020-08-21 01:30:04                        Time zone: Asia/Kuala_Lumpur (+08, +0800) System clock synchronized: yes                                          NTP service: active                                   RTC in local TZ: no

3. Check for available timezones in the sysem.

   $ timedatectl list-timezones Africa/Abidjan Africa/Accra Africa/Algiers Africa/Bissau Africa/Cairo Africa/Casablanca Africa/Ceuta Africa/El_Aaiun Africa/Johannesburg Africa/Juba Africa/Khartoum ##### snipped 

4. Search for your timezone from the list.

   $ timedatectl list-timezones | grep -i tokyo Asia/Tokyo

5. Unlink your currently used timezone.

   $ sudo unlink /etc/localtime [sudo] password for user:

6. Link /etc/localtime to your new timezone.

   $ sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Tokyo /etc/localtime

7. Confirm changes using timedatectl.

   $ timedatectl                 Local time: Jum 2020-08-21 10:34:29 JST            Universal time: Jum 2020-08-21 01:34:29 UTC                  RTC time: Jum 2020-08-21 01:34:29                     Time zone: Asia/Tokyo (JST, +0900)     System clock synchronized: yes                                       NTP service: active                                RTC in local TZ: no