[NTLUG:Discuss] age verification in systemd

[David Eddleman]

I wouldn't say that. systemd does do some things right, but they creeped it
over the years to do more and more. If they had just kept it to init-level
stuff, then they would've been fine. But systemd managing disks,
mountpoints, and a lot more is much too bloated and a source of a lot of
the issues.

Also this has caused a fork of systemd. Because that's a wonderful thing
about OSS: if you don't like it, fork it! The primary one is liberated
systemd, but several other forks have been done. This should be a sign to
the systemd developers, but I think they're too ideologically captured.

But I think at this point the next solution is to ditch systemd entirely
where possible. I'll probably continue to use RH and derivatives for work
since I'm stuck there, but I'll probably use OpenMandriva, Devuan, or Artix
for my personal builds in the future.

FYI, this is a list being maintained by Bryan Lunduke of those he knows who
are or aren't going to comply:
https://github.com/BryanLunduke/DoesItAgeVerify
(I have heard Arch is considering it, or at least has some of the same
people pushing, so who knows there.)

On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 5:52 PM David Good <david.good1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> So the anti-systemd crowd is slowly being proven right ? They were always
> concerned that systemd was centralizing things too much and making the
> system into a tool managing the user rather than the other way round .
> These concerns only grew louder when Pottering went to Microsoft .
>
> To be fair to Pottering , his work has definitely changed the Linux tools
> and experience to be a lot more "modern" , though the question remains
> whether or not it's "better" .
>
> --David
>
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 5:10 PM stuart yarus <syarus at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > From distrowatch dot com / weekly.php?issue=20260323#news:
> >
> > "Last week we talked about age verification laws
> > <https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20260316#qa>, what they are
> and
> > the issues surrounding these surveillance efforts. This week a new age
> > tracking feature was added to systemd
> > <https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954>: "[This change] stores
> the
> > user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in
> > California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.
> > The xdg-desktop-portal project is adding an age verification portal
> > <https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/pull/1922> that needs a
> > data
> > source for the user's age. userdb already stores personal metadata
> > (emailAddress, realName, location) so birthDate is a natural fit." The
> > birthdate field can be set by the administrator only, but can be read by
> > the user and the user's applications. "
> >
> > "Update: Following strong feedback from the community, an attempt was
> made
> > to revert the change <https://distrowatch.com/<a href=>. The attempted
> > reversal of the change includes a comment: "Introducing birth date
> storage
> > or age queries (even local-only) creates a new class of sensitive user
> data
> > in the OS that didn't exist before. It risks normalizing permission-like
> > checks inside the desktop session and could be extended to far more
> > invasive controls in the future." The reversal was denied by project
> leader
> > Pottering, who insists the tracking feature will remain. "
> >
> >
> > --
> > Stuart Yarus
> > _______________________________________________
> > http://www.ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >
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