…Practically, what does this even mean for a systemd user like me?
What app would use this? And If anything actually use the field, can't I just enter a random date, like I have across the internet forever?
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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Self reporting has long been honored as the gold fucking standard for honesty! How dare you sully that with your very discrete scrolling to a random year, and not even bothering to select a date! Our data mining overlords will be displeased.
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It's so hilarious that the most recent thing that's happened on this shitty PR is a request for Claude to review their code.
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Nobody is forking systemd, especially over something like this. People have no idea how much work it is to maintain software like this.
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Why do they need the age after all. What are authorities going to do with it?
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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.
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
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I am a Coloradan; I have already called all 4 cosponsors of the bill here. What can I do now? Does anyone know which orgs are fighting against this? We have a petition process to get constitutional amendments on the ballot. My dream would be to collect enough signatures to get this constitutional amendment on the next ballot but I think the deadline for submitting the text (prior to collecting sigs) is late this month:
"No form of AI or ID-based age verification shall be used as a condition for granting Colorado residents access to a website, internet service, or operating system. Age gates that rely exclusively on user-reported age may continue to be used in their current form to inform users that a website may not be appropriate for all users. Colorado recognizes that parents are the responsible party for what their children access online and that requiring ID verification for access to computing resources or digital resources is a violation of free speech and freedom of inquiry."
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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.
It is possible that California law will be changed. But similar ideas are popping up in other contexts and it's unlikely that they'll all go away. This implementation is fairly generic and useful for other things besides age verification, so we shouldn't decide whether to merge it or not based on a single law in any jurisdiction.
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954#issuecomment-4032355482
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Meta lobbies are really everywhere these days.
I didn't need one more reason to hate systemd
Give them an inch, and they will take a mile. Fuck this PR.
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
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.
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What is the most effective way to gather all of my personal stuff within Linux and it be as plug and play with every distro as possible?
Like if I wanted to infinitely distro hop to avoid this fucking Trainwreck right here, how would I easily and effectively ensure I can?
Can I take a set of folders? Is there a backup format of some kind?
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