this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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I was wondering when I would see this headline. I wonder if any other big names do similar
Linux Distros (so far) Refusing Age Verification
EDIT
I recommend going to Ageless Linux's site and reading up on their take on the whole issue. They clearly illustrate how poorly thought out the California law is.
I also wonder whether or not grapheneos, or open source Linux OSs in general, will face any repercussions for failing to comply to these regulations due to the relatively low user count.
Motorolla bending the knee to the mass surveillance corps and international governments comes to mind. We'll see how their deal with GrapheneOS goes now.
Sure. Let them be sued on profits made 😂
Hate to say it but systemd, the init system of most Linux distros, already has PRs with maintainer backing to implement DoB recording.
Some people can't kneel fast enough.
DoB recording, and ID age verification, are two different things though.
No, they're the same in this context.
Which already has a revert commit https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179
The self-important creator of Systemd has personally blocked that PR, if I'm hearing correctly, which would suggest he or his employer Microsoft is all in on it.
"I'm not picking a side" and "this future proofs standardization" is of little comfort, that is seriously suspect. I ought to look to alternatives to SystemD(odge the issue failed).
SystemDOGE. It is just a matter of time before Big Balls exfiltrates our Linux data.
He left MS in January
That has already been closed
Maybe this'll take the shine off that wunderkinder mess and people will finally be free to choose something more reliable. I love how RH pushed this beta software so hard and my reboots are now just shite -- unreliable and occasionally ridiculously delayed.
I'll be glad to see the back of that metastatic shitball.
That's just systemd adding a birthdate field to their userdb. Doesn't require that it be filled out or accurate, and especially doesn't require it to be validated against a government database. I don't see it as fundamentally any different from adding a userdb field for favorite color, phone number, or blood type.
Without 3rd party validation, I really don't see the privacy issue with an age field. Without verification, it is, at worst, one more byte available to hash into a unique identifier, but you can feed that field from /dev/random at every query and poison even that hypothetical.
You are absolutely right, we are not in fact getting screwed, they are just applying the lube for later. (Shamelessly stolen from elsewhere)
Why the ever loving fuck does an init system even need a user database?
Honest to God, if FIFA were giving out a World "Understanding UNIX" Prize, Poettering would be the inaugural, and only, winner. Never in the field of operating systems has one man driven so much enshittification through sheer force of cluelessness coupled with supreme arrogance. And in a world that Steve Ballmer still occupies, that's one hell of an accolade.
Systemd is more than an init system. Systemd was designed to be different from previous Unix-style single-/narrow-purpose services. Many distros making the switch seems to indicate that such a switch had significant enough upsides or necessities. No?
I read an article about why Systemd became what it is, and why it makes sense, and that made sense to me. Integration and a fully designed system has advantages over disconnected utilities and systems you have to connect and negotiate, especially on system- and boot-up level concerns.
Whoosh.
Plesse don’t give them any ideas. Here’s a list of what’s currently included
https://systemd.io/USER_RECORD/
I imagine people behind this law are pretty interested in this small but powerful user base. I would just boldly assume that a lot of people responsible for independent software and privacy advocates are using Linux etc. So its a interesting user base for sure. But regulating open source software luckily is pretty much impossible and they wont give up their(our) privacy without a fight. Also, we will see how much the user base will grow when these regulations get tighter.
They can simply say on their download pages that residents of Brazil and California are not allowed to use their OS.
Genuine question:
is Graphene a "big name"? They talk a big game and are probably one of the biggest alternative phone OSes but all results I can find are putting them at 250k users and less than 2% of the Android market share.
But, more importantly: Do they at all care about US government contracts? Red Had have RHEL. ubuntu have whatever they call their premium OS for enterprise users. Google and Apple are obvious.
Frankly I think they are the largest os vendor that is going to take a principled stance on this.
GrapheneOS has a deal with a hardware manufacturer, Motorola. I'd consider this refusal to be a big deal on those grounds alone
Big name for government backed hacking tools to list them separately on supported devices / OS cause it's more secure.
Big enough for a headline, not big enough to make a difference.
I would go so far as to say they are only big enough to make an updoot-bait headline at that.