I'm not sure that's the usual, so much as a common one. I have a Rubik's cube at my desk and the yellow/white are adjacent, as are blue/green. Red and orange are opposite, though. It was probably acquired circa 2000.
Is it an official Rubik's one or some other brand? I've got about 15 of them (Mostly from QiYi and GAN) and all of them have the yellow/white opposite. Of course they're all made within the last 5 years so maybe it changed at some point.