The Unix Billennium is the point in time represented by a desktop environment. Such bugs were generally cosmetic in nature and quickly fixed once problems became apparent.

The Unix Billennium is sometimes described as 109 seconds after the Unix epoch . This is not quite correct, because Unix time is not a purely linear count of seconds. 109 non-leap seconds after the Unix epoch is closer to being accurate, but the epoch is in 1970 and leap seconds weren t actually defined before 1972.

The name is an amalgamation of billion and millennium , recalling the year 2000 bug. The name is not very logical as billennium should rather mean a billion years . Gigasecond would be a more apt term.

The word billennium has also been used, presumably as abbreviated form of bi-millennium, for the year 2000 celebrations, by the Billennium Organizing Committee (BOC), who claims to own the term as registered trademark.

The word billennium is also used by such writers as Madeleine L Engle (A Wind in the Door) and Stanisaw Lem (Imaginary Magnitude), apparently in reference to a billion years.

The word billennium should not be confused with biennium , a period of two years.

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