My date of birth is FU/CK/YOU
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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YOU-FU-CK is the better format and this is not debatable.
This guy fucks
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FU/CK/YOOU
This is getting blown way out of proportion.
What’s being described right now is just an optional date-of-birth field. It doesn’t block installation, it doesn’t require verification, and it doesn’t change how the OS actually works. It just exists, and you can ignore it entirely.
The leap to “this is step one toward needing a passport to install an OS” is a classic slippery slope. It jumps from a harmless, non-enforced field straight to full identity verification with no actual mechanism connecting the two.
More importantly, this ignores how Linux works at a fundamental level.
Linux is open source, which means the code is public and can be modified by anyone. If any distribution ever tried to enforce something invasive like identity checks, that code would be stripped out almost immediately and redistributed as a fork. People already fork distributions over far smaller disagreements than this, and users would migrate just as quickly.
For this scenario people are worried about to actually happen, the entire ecosystem would have to move in lockstep and the community would have to abandon one of its core principles overnight. That’s not a realistic outcome.
Being skeptical of regulation is reasonable. Treating this like the beginning of mandatory identity verification at the OS level, especially in the Linux world, just isn’t grounded in how the technology or the community actually operates.
What’s being described right now is just an optional date-of-birth field.
The timing is dogshit.
Like getting handed a grenade pin and told "It's a fucking pin! It's harmless, what are you worried about?"
What is the use case for that field? I do not see it as being used as anything else than a stepping stone towards age verification.
this is the correct way to frame this issue. it serves no purpose other than to support things that are further down a slope
I wonder if a fork becomes successful, or if traditional init based systems make a comeback
enterprise users obviously won't give a shit about any of this, and will keep using redhat or amazon linux or whatever
Seems like you don't really need to fork the system until someone applies DOB field in a meaningful way.
Even in such a situation, I would suspect the short-term solution is simply a patch or crack to neuter the functionality that the DOB field is supposed to implement. A full fork seems unnecessary, even counterproductive, since it would define your OS as meaningfully distinct (and noticeably out of compliance) with a standard installation.
It's giving an inch. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be fighting tooth an nail against every single aggression against our privacy. They've already taken far too much.
is a classic slippery slope
Were have you been the last few years or so? We're not just "going down" one slippery slope after another, we're speeding down them.
Classic Authoritarian Log Flume
with mass adoption of enshitification. and with the world in general. calling things a slippery slope fallacy is a long and losing gamble.
if the field was put in because of a law, then it’s for a reason, if the data isn’t important, or enforced, then it is useless and should not have been added.
I wonder if it was put in for the same reason CA passed a self-reporting law recently. I wonder if it's an attempt to repel through malicious compliance far worse age verification that's forced at a federal (US) level.
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If that is the case, explain why is it being implemented in the heat of mass age verification? What is the motive?
The motive is mass government surveillance obviously.
But like with many things in our government federally and statewide, these people don't actually understand how the technology functions. They can make all the laws that they want and Linux will still remain an open source software.
Thanks for the explanation. What you have described is not different to the manner in which I understand the situation as well.
My concern is that (despite your good intentions) your previous comment may have the unintended effect of making light of the situation we are all in.
The 'field' we have the privilege to ignore now id a mandatory requirement for a passport and iris scan tomorrow.
My first thought is to not sit still and accept the new law - rather, to empower everybody here to write to their legislators to block or reverse these gross violations of privacy. May Linux developers have already expressed willful non-compliance to the law. Show we not get behind these developers and organisations (like the EFF) and demand a repeal?
I however apologise if I have misunderstood your intent. But one thing is for sure, if we do not put up a fight at present, then the future is already lost.
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An init system does not need to know my personal details; it’s for starting programs in a specific order just fuck off with this shit. You don’t even have to capitulate to this stuff and these freaks are out here doing it preemptively like they expect a fucking pat on the head for being first in line to dive tongue first on to that boot.
Systemd isn't an init system. Systemd-init is an init system and it is a part of the systemd suite.
It has been sold as just an init system to people who argued it's a Katamari Damacy. We now know who was right.
Whatever the fuck it is it doesn’t need to know how old I am to do its job.
It already has fields for personal information, though, and they're every bit as sensitive as your birthdate. realName, emailAddress, location, and timezone are already in there. The important part is that they're all optional, and you don't have to fill them in at all, or can fill them in with fake data. The system still serves you, not some outside party.
But the timing of it does have a lot of people freaking out about it.
I now fear it will one day be required for services on the internet (as it is by a recent law in California). I want to make that less likely, and more difficult to implement.
Having a principle the majority do not have and refusing to participate means being another step further out of society.
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My hate of SystemD is further justified! And you all just called me gray haired and not willing to update with the times!
Remember when they said "relax, it's just an init system, no biggie"? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Everyone should set it to 1970-01-01.
Nah, I'm all about that 9001/01/01 life
In other news there has been a massive uptick in Boomers converting to Linux....
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