Give them an inch, and they will take a mile. Fuck this PR.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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I'll start off my comment with something everyone can agree on: the age verification laws absolutely sucks. It's a surveillance law masquerading as a means of "protecting" children. It also completely undermines free and open source projects, and therefore, protected speech. The fact systemd had to add a BirthDate field is unfortunate, however, I would blame the lawmakers for creating the law that the developers of systemd now have to comply with.
I'm okay with the implementation. It is an optional (meaning you have to add it yourself) field which only specifies the date of birth. It doesn't seem to be at all invasive, nor does it attempt to "verify" it at the moment. Granted, anything is possible, but I don't think there's a good enough reason why systemd would EVER feel the need to add age verification. Before you say anything regarding corporations, please answer this: why would a corporation add age verification to a system manager their servers depend on? How will that profit them?
I get why people are angry, but I think this anger should be funneled towards the lawmakers pulling off nonsense like this. Fight those who are actively trying to take your rights away. Bullying software developers for complying to international laws will lead to nothing but hate.
Nah this is more systemd bloat and certainly invites criticism. Other inits aren't even commenting, let alone complying.
Other inits aren’t even commenting, let alone complying.
This would be a fair point, if systemd wasn't more than an init system. While a service manager (init system) is included, systemd is a system manager. OpenRC, runit, and other init systems do not need to comment because their only task is to mount the necessary file systems, setup the device manager, and start daemons1. systemd as a system manager not only needs to manage services, but it also needs to manage devices, logs, the hostname, etc.
Does this mean systemd is not bloat? Not at all, but it is not as fat as you think it is. Your system could honestly be fatter without systemd if you try to replicate everything it does with external applications. Does this mean systemd should also be justified to add an optional field for your date of birth? I guess I would say it's weird on it's own. However, given the context, I believe they are doing what they can.
this new anti-systemd sentiment reminds me of anti-TPM and anti-SecureBoot sentiment
having TPMs and SecureBoot on Linux machines has only ever empowered device owners to ensure that the software on their devices has not been tampered with
there's never been a case where these technologies were used against Linux device owners
likewise, I predict that Linux device owners may find the age field useful for certain opt-in parental controls, but we'll otherwise look back on this and shrug at the extreme paranoia
A question I have that I hope someone can answer: how is the age check at the OS level verified? Is it just a trust issue that the user is putting in the correct date?
At least for the California and Colorado laws, it is only attestation. But you also have to realize that, with how this law is defined, this only applies to parents setting up a account for someone <18yo.
Looks like this is just for storing the data (birth date). Distros can use it and do age restriction or ignore it. Not a big deal imo. Its not like systemd does anything more with the date.
Ah yes, because systemd has a history of not expanding its functionality beyond reasonable scope
Yeah. I always use a fake date anyways so it’s not like it matters.
Unless you're randomising it constantly, it still becomes part of a fingerprint for you.
The fingerprint is already pretty effective. Putting something like 01/01/1970 would add a small amount of precision, but likely not enough to make a difference.
Why do the rest of us have to have this shit added in our systems just because some Yankees (and Brazil) passed some bills? My country has already said they won't be doing any age verification shit. I'm starting to think there's some big conspiracy here that FOSS isn't as independent as we believe it is.
FOSS isn’t as independent as we believe it is
Some parts are indeed sponsored by corporations, that's not a bad thing per se because financial support is important.
Problems arise when corporations push changes solely for their own interest instead of the benefit of the community, this PR seems to be that case.
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This is all to inch us towards an eventual Digital ID, similar to how we have a driver's license for a car.
they also open accompanied PRs on this and I'm a little frightened
https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-provision/pull/1338
https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/pull/4290
Final Edit: The PR has been merged into main.
Fucking hell. All he had to do was fucking nothing, the bastard.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/revoluciana-facing-fascism-sabotage
Sabotage sounds spicy. It sounds dangerous.
And yet, the underlying concept is simply this: inefficiency.
I told you last time, make every inch have its cost.
Resistance does not have to be violent, and that’s not something I’m advocating here. Resistance is the word no. Resistance is standing in place. Resistance is pushing.
Resistance is the albatross around the neck of your opposition. Resistance is the anchor that drags along the sea floor.
Here are some incredibly mundane but effective examples from the manual:
Make mistakes with purchasing travel tickets
Make engineering mistakes
Make long speeches and waste time
Act ignorant, or ask a lot of questions: if you’re not familiar with the concept of sea-lioning, you should really learn it
Take longer to do your work
Even if you’re terrified of doing more, this is simply a place to start.
You are someone and you have a responsibility to do something.
You cannot make it easier for the fascists to achieve their goals. You can’t do it today, and you can’t do it later if they claim authority. You must stand in the way of oppression.
This is fucking horseshit. I'm turning against fucking systemd , and I had no fucking opinion before, now it's completely clear they're a bunch of 1940s IBM wannabees.
EDIT : What a surprise, the fucker that wrote the PR works for IBM and "A Medical Malpractice company" and the one that merged it works for Microsoft.
The origin of inefficiency as resistance comes from people in concentration camps deliberately doing poor jobs at forced labour as a form of resistance. If you're posting on Lemmy right now you can do a lot more than inefficiency. The people who had to resort to inefficient slave labour as resistance could only dream of what you can do.
ok great. can you tie it back to the discussion please?
Conversations move through different topics.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself.
Wow that's an insane level of bootlicking, it was completely free for them to do absolutely nothing about this nonsense law and give the middle finger if asked by the US
I didn't care before but it turns out the systemd haters were on to something for a long time, fuck these owners for even considering this and even locking the PR to avoid valid criticism, I hope all the contributors create a fork, jump ship and never let the previous owners commit a single line of code to it
It adds an optional birthdate field to userdb. The desktop does not have to populate it. I'm honestly surprised this wasn't already a field in UserDB
I don't understand. What's systemd got anything to do with age?
As per the linked ticket, they are a story for a handful of user data. An XDG portal needs to store this stuff, and they are already integrated, so this is just to accommodate the other project.
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What is the alternative to systemd? I'm sort of a linux noob when it comes to this deeper level stuff.
Just use something simple with systemd. The Linux community is its own worst enemy, in inviting people to come to Linux because it's so simple and beginner friendly, then the trap snaps shut and they tell you to pick a distro and all you have to do is decide on either gnome, plasma or cinnamon, and between arch and debian and ubuntu, and between snap and Flatpack, between Vim, Emacs, nano, and micro, between Wayland and the other one, between systemd and violent self-fellagelation, and whatever you choose, make sure it's FOSS and exactly what the next person on the forum used and as pure as the driven snow or you'll be bullied, belittled, and trolled by egomaniacs, elitists, and gatekeepers until you fawn like a thrashed housewife who 'only gets hit when she fucks up', or you give up and install windows again.
Just use whatever works for you, makes your life easier, and avoid the Linux purity circlejerk. When it stops working for you, use something else. Go your own way.
If you don't know what systemd does and you aren't affected by this, use it. If there's closed source software you wanna run, run it. If you want to install a snap, do it. If you like using VS code, install it on your Linux, it works great. You will never be pure enough to satisfy the Linux community.
Okay but not really? Systemd does not really provide that much usability that any other init system + elogind doesn't. The benefit to the FOSS environment is that we, as users and developers, can starve out bad actors.
Want Nix but don't like systemd? Guix. Want Arch but don't like systemd? Void. You know what "compile" means and don't want systemd? Gentoo.
I'm just gonna keep using systemd
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SystemD isnt exactly a program but more of a group of projects, the only "core" SystemD software on most distros is the init system... Which you can run completely without SystemD's UserDB system (the part being talked about in the post).
Basically this means you as a user dont have to do anything but switch away from projects that depend on SystemD's UserDB (like Gnome), not SystemD as a whole
However if you do want to move away from SystemD as a whole you can replace your init system with another one, gentoo's wiki is a good starting point for learning a bit more: wiki. Personally I love using openrc but of you have no need to touch init files... Dont switch
Basically this means you as a user dont have to do anything but switch away from projects that depend on SystemD's UserDB (like Gnome), not SystemD as a whole
You can also just... not put your PII into UserDB. It can store clear names, mail addresses, postal addresses and now birthdates... but it can also just serve as an interface to /etc/passwd. Which conveniently also works with LDAP accounts (unlike your hand written /etc/passwd parser) if you're an organisation that uses LDAP.
This is the entirety of what UserDB knows about me:
userdbctl user --output=json $(whoami)
{
"userName" : "sky",
"uid" : 1000,
"gid" : 100,
"homeDirectory" : "/users/sky/home"
"shell" : "/run/current-system/sw/bin/fish"
}
I don't expect that to change with this PR.
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