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The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux
(www.sambent.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Can someone explain why there is a separate merge for systemd and Arch? If Arch just uses the systemd init which was already modified, then what was the separate request for?
I'm using vanilla Arch and will be pissed if I have to switch, but I will based on this. I'm not willing to give an inch.
The systemd change 'just' adds a birthday field to the user data, where you could store (or don't) the users birthday, that then could be used by other applications to request an age bracket.
The Arch-change doesn't effect real arch Linux. It modifies the archinstall script (so, irrelevant, if you install according to Wiki) to ask the user for their birthday during installation and stores it for systemd.
Oh cool. So I don't have to deal with anything after updating. Sweet!
Collaborator!
I will revolt, once this tries to attack my privacy.
I'm fine, as long it complies technical requirements that applications will implement sooner or later, while preserving my privacy by simply defaulting to 1900-01-01 or something.
disclaimer: linux noob here.
the separate pull request appears to be for archinstall, "a helper library which automates the installation of Arch Linux." it would collect user age during installation.... somehow?