this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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None of the id fields in the systemd db are required to be filled. This is useless. Simply don't put any personal info in, and bam, you're already liberated, from laws that aren't even in effect yet!
This is perfectly logical and I agree. Except that this controversy has prompted me to go learn about Lennart Poettering. I've been using systemd forever and I like it - I like journald and remote journald, I like networkd, I even deleted cron off my systems and use systemd timers exclusively. I knew there was some controversy about Lennart, but I didn't really care. Now that I've read a bit about his background and, maybe more importantly, his new company - I don't have a good feeling for the future of systemd.
Finally someone who's read into the issue
Will you still say that when they implement ID checking functionality?
Will you still say that when aliens from the 19th Dimension verify your age rectally?
I don't know what this derailment is ultimately trying to say honestly.
It's saying that you can invent an infinite number of hypothetical futures but they are not useful for making decisions in the here and now
The prospect of being prompted to submit an ID is not useful for making decisions in the here and now? As far as I understand it, this is the concrete danger. California lawmakers and lawmakers from elsewhere have indicated that this is only the beginning.
But this is just speculation. The fact is, systemd introduced a new optional field in the local database. They don't publish an OS so they have no obligation to do anything more, actual implementation would have to happen in other projects.
What this is, is a spite-fork by some random AI researcher and anybody installing that on their system has way larger problems here and now than hypothetical ID verification in the maybe future.
Why are the people who decide on changes to systemd implementing stuff that the vast majority of Linux users vehemently reject? +Things that they have no legal obligation of adding I might add.
No one deeply cares about the spite fork. It's weird that commentators have suddenly become very acclimatised to the systemd changes. A few days ago people were asking themselves why a rando got through with an intensely disliked pull request and now we are here.
I think you vastly over estimate the importance of the reddit/lemmy-sphere freaking out over this.
And the more insane the slippery slopes you imagine skiing down, the less seriously you're taken. The fact that there isn't a serious programmer making a fork and instead y'all promoted a slopfork from someone who didn't read the docs, should be a wakeup call for how unserious y'all are.
If it's the vast majority of Linux users, how come there was not one that's read the systemd docs?
I honestly don't care that much about the law eitherway but the hyperventilating over a milktoast law is something else, it makes me think maybe we should age gate higher.
I don't. The people I know in real life don't take likely to the changes.
This is the fallacy fallacy. There is a precedent for freaking out. Foreign routers being banned, countries and regions stating that this is only the beginning for age verification, you name it. Anyone who submits to that in any way unambiguously invites the new order that is enforced upon them, I say that in regard to systemd specifically.
No serious programmer is forking systemd because systemd is more or less doing kernel tasks besides the Linux kernel... and then some. This violates GNU best practices. Not to mention openrc and plenty of other init systems existing as a yet uncompromised alternative. Also you are twisting what I am saying, I specifically am not promoting the fork in the article.
You didn't see the barrage of critism under the pull request, did you? Makes me wonder if you read anything at all.
The law is not at all non-trivial or milquetoast. With ID verification and other methods of age verification you absolutely can unmask users online if states demand APIs be implemented.
You sound like a narc btw!
Yeah because they likely got misinformation about it from you, and nodded along because Alien rectal probes sound bad.
Good thing there is no ID verification in the PR.
You sound like Alex Jones!
I guess such a response can only come from the head of a "rioting pacifist". You turn up at the protest but always keep a distance of 50 yards from the crowd so you can say you were part of something while having done nothing. It's exactly people like you who would have told critics of Franco that they're delusional and would report people for going outside to catch a breath of fresh air during martial law. All the while broadcasting your liberal virtues of pacifism and political action in all directions.
You are someone who couldn't get into the NSA and all the other cool agencies, or your country's equivalent should you not be US American. No badge, no ID number, no nuthin' - just your computer and you. Should you actually work for the govt. then that reflects rather poorly on the government; You are an awfully unconvincing propagandist. Incapable of reading comments and engaging clearly in serious discussions. I would fire you if you astroturfed for me. God knows, you are so shit at it that I think you are an LLM.
WTF are you on about?
I'd be happy to engage in serious discussion but you're working on Alex Jones level, veins throbbing over an optional field in systemd
Obviously not, that would be something very very different than what they've done.
What systemd has done is the following: They went "we speak for the distros utilizing our program now"
What they've done, is in the user info field (which already has a ton of information that almost nobody ever fills out) they added a date of birth field. They do not control what it's used for, who's going to use it, or if the user will ever bother filling it out. Perhaps nobody will ever implement a use for it, it's really nothing.
No, what they have done is kowtowing.
What? It's like saying systemd is handing the government your info because they have a field for your real name and address.
YOU control what info goes there, if any. It mandates NOTHING.
You may as well be mad at vim because your text editor is capable of storing your birthdate if you go in and type it and save it to /public/myInfo.txt
Context matters. Systemd did this as a reaction to frankly insane laws. They didn't have to do anything like this, yet they did and comparing this to changing and creating files manually in vim misses the point entirely. Intentionally doing something is very different from a feature being natively present.
Until closed source or even open source programs demand an ID verified age from the OS. When that happens you are forced to unmask yourself and the systemd shit is the first step to making such an API possible. It normalizes genuinely insane demands that add nothing for the users except compliance.
when that happens, I'll build my own ISO with that part stripped out, or just move away from systemd
at that point, I'd stop using the internet, or switch to only using tor/i2p.
Yupp 100% optional.
for now