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Artix isn't going to comply with age-gating.
(forum.artixlinux.org)
it is copies?
First Artix made me not vulnerable to the XZ backdoor (requires systemd). Now it saves me from age verification nonsense. Even on Lemmy sentiment seems people who avoid systemd are just cranks. But every time we are right.
Iirc, the XZ backdoor was specifically targeting RH and Debian, which for some reason link libsystemd into OpenSSH. Afaik even upstream Arch was unaffected, not just Artix. The exploit code, though non-functional, still made its way onto your system (assuming you updated when it was in a release version).
I'm not defending systemd though, it's clear that Poettering's goals do not align with the rest of the Linux community. I'm saying that Artix not being affected by the XZ backdoor is not a good argument for why to use Artix or avoid systemd.
It's like saying "Linux doesn't get malware" because most desktop malware targets the OS with the largest desktop userbase, Windows. This alone doesn't suddenly make Linux "better". That doesn't mean there aren't other reasons to avoid Windows.
It saves you from what exactly? As a rational crank, surely you have an explanation.
Unless you use xdg-desktop-portal, the field that systemd added does absolutely nothing.
It's an optional information field for user accounts, systemd doesn't require that it is filled nor does systemd do anything to verify or check the field. User accounts also store e-mail and location and you are free to not enter that information or to enter fake information.
I don't see the vulnerability, especially considering that you're comparing it to an SSH vulnerability (which, it should be noted, was caught in testing and never released).
The rational is systemd has a huge amount of features that normal desktop users will never need. If you use something like OpenRC or Runit the experience is not much (or any) different. All those features will introduce complexity and potential bugs and vulnerabilities.
Unless you use xdg-desktop-portal, the field that systemd added does absolutely nothing.
Sure it doesn't add much, but many of the systemd things are 'not much'. But together it is a lot.
I don’t see the vulnerability, especially considering that you’re comparing it to an SSH vulnerability (which, it should be noted, was caught in testing and never released).
Luckily it was the case, but it was way too close for comfort. It doesn't change the fact that bloated systems like systemd are what enable these types of attacks. If you use many of its features I'm sure its great, all software has bugs and holes in it. But the point is that if you don't need the features you don't need to expose yourself to the extra bulk and risks. Same for things like sudo vs doas. Almost everyone uses sudo but 99.9%+ doesn't use any features that doas doesn't have. And then of course systemd invents its own alternative 😅.
And then there is the Unix philosophy. If we need age verification, why does it need to be in the init system? Why not a separate package that can be installed along side any init system / kernel / desktop environment / etc? If it lives in the init system, every init system needs to implement their own version of it.
I understand the arguments against systemd. It isn't just an init system and it fulfills multiple roles, which goes against the Unix philosophy.
That being said, systemd does store user information. Since this issue requires the storage of additional user information, in order to comply with the law, the systemd team are making their software compatible with complying with the law.
Ultimately, it's the end user who gets to determine how the software is configured. You can ignore the birthdate field and systemd will not do anything to prevent you from doing so. systemd doesn't require the data in order to operate, it doesn't verify the data and it doesn't prompt you to enter the data. The consequences of ignoring this addition are exactly zero.
It's simply there because a law exists and users of systemd (like xdg-desktop-portal) require a location to store the data.
I hate the age verification laws and think they're going to cause more problems than they claim to solve. I'm not cheering on these laws, I'm simply pointing out that attacking systemd for adding an optional field in order to allow compliance isn't rational.
Aim the ire at the people making the laws, not the volunteer developers who are following laws even if they don't like them.
I think the issue outside of capitulation is the matter of systemd's obligation or lack thereof to make this change. Systemd by law isn't required to do anything. xdg-desktop-portal more so is, but that raises a bigger question: Why is a jurisdiction specific requirement being rolled into this? Do all jurisdiction specific requirements need to be loaded for optional use? Why is this being shunted to xdg-desktop-portal to handle the brunt of this?
Ultimately the PR was closed and for this very reason:
That amounts to a short-sighted decision to tune the specification to one state's law, without taking into account that other states and countries can define different age brackets, and without the ability for an application to know which age bracket classification (California, Japan if/when they mandate it, etc.) applies.
Expanding on that, the outright shortsightedness of the request is made more clear further into that discussion: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/40974#issuecomment-4018655808
>Gender plays a role on whether you could use a computer and what sites you can access?In Afghanistan, all forms of higher education are not permitted for women. Furthermore, the Taliban have a reputation as gentlemen who are not used to repeating themselves.
I think the issue outside of capitulation is the matter of systemd’s obligation or lack thereof to make this change.
Most of what systemd does isn't based on an obligation, it's based on creating a system that fulfills the needs of the users of the software.
xdg-desktop-portal was adding age verification and the logical place to store that information is in the user's records. systemd is the project which xdg-desktop-portal looks to for storing user records and so systemd added a field to support xdg-desktop-portal's requirements.
Like I've said elsewhere, I don't agree with the age verification laws... but they do exist. The software developers in the various projects are attempting to comply with them (or not, as in the OP) in their own ways. Nothing that systemd is doing here will affect you unless you want it to. The field is optional and not verified by systemd in any way (other than ensuring that it's an ISO 8601-compatible date).
Ultimately the PR was closed and for this very reason:
The contention was that the field would only work for complying with a single state's law and the data wouldn't be useful to comply with other laws. For example, if a state defined an adult as 18 and another state defined an adult as 16 then simply storing 'Adult: [True|False]' would require individual fields for each legal jurisdiction. So it doesn't meet the specifications globally.
To fix this, the PR that was merged stores a birthdate and leaves it to the application to determine how to use that information for compliance. Here's the merged PR:
I totally get what you are saying, and I don't think we are really in disagreement about anything here. This is just my personal point of contention.
Its opening a can of worms for xdg-desktop-portal and systemd for something that they don't need to or shouldn't need to act on. If they make this change then: If the Afghani govt issues a request for gender, they should include that in userDB as well then. If Colorado's new law requires age data to be held differently or different format, they will need to include that as well then. COPPA already exists, so do they need to further change how they store this data? If a new federal law is passed for age verification, they will need to support that on top of the existing state laws. Should it be jurisdiction specific? EU laws might state you can't arbitrarily store this data, so now you need to check operating geo. Which jurisdictions do you honor? Which do you ignore?
Its optional until made so convoluted that its required. I think what's so interesting to me is how this all goes back to a 30+ year old debate on the UNIX philosophy.
Oh yeah, this is totally a can of worms that I don't think we should be opening.
I just channel that into yelling at politicians, the FOSS devs are on our team they just have to make the best of a dumb situation.
Unless you use xdg-desktop-portal, the field that systemd added does absolutely nothing.
Yet. it's a foot-on-the-door to demand more stuff, and some distros have already shown they are going to merrily open up their arses and ours.
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Good, Maybe a list of "Pirate Distros" would help people.
Kinda crazy how downloading Linux isos might actually become illegal.
What a fucking clown world we live in.
What a fucking clown world we live in.
i think we let it happen when we collectively chose not to push back against the us government's capture of the kernel project when they forced its maintainers to kicked out russian developers; pastor niemoller explains it best:
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
jefferyjefferson @lemmy.org
Kinda crazy how downloading Linux isos might actually become illegal.
What a fucking clown world we live in.
Welcome to the world of open-source piracy if that happens.
Lol, which is funny as every torrent client gives the example of downloading Linux isos (which is probably for legality reasons)
Yep, that's me, just Linux isos, I just like to collect 'em, y'know, and store them on a small 100TB NAS I can access from any ~~Plex client~~ computer should I need them. You never know.
100tb ... You must be downloading larger 4k Linux images.
In this case Artix already is a systemd-free distro, but this is part of why i think it's a bad idea that systemd is wanting to implement the age verification crap, cause i think the distro should be allowed to decide if they want to comply or not. Feels like distros that use systemd will be forced to comply unless they change init, which is probably a pain in of itself.
Btw, what does the desktop portal actually do? I've installed a lot of programs over the years, including flatpaks, and i never seemed to need it. I hope it stays that way considering they're implementing this shit too.
Systemd isn't implementing age verification.
They added the ability to store the data because the xdg-desktop-portal team added the ability to set an age and that requires a place to store the data. No component 'verifies' the age, it's a data field that you can enter whatever you'd like into.
From https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954 :
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 (flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal#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.
Full date rather than just birth year: birth year alone has up to ~12 months of imprecision at age boundaries, which could misclassify a 17-year-old as 18 or vice versa.
Sure, but they both seem way too eager for my taste to go along with this nonsense, and if you refuse to implement this, you don't need a place to store it either. I suppose it's nice for the distros that do want to use it.
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In this case Artix already is a systemd-free distro, but this is part of why i think it’s a bad idea that systemd is wanting to implement the age verification crap, cause i think the distro should be allowed to decide if they want to comply or not. Feels like distros that use systemd will be forced to comply unless they change init, which is probably a pain in of itself.
Where do I install an Ageless-style patch to force flagrant non-compliance for systemd distros?
That is why I donate to them.
I hope you donate to them
Tnx
Artix is patching many packages anyway, so one more package patched to remove age stuff or add a dummy interface that always returns 18+ won't be too difficult.
That's what Ageless already does, so maybe Artix could implement that officially in their distro by what you're suggesting?
In my mind, region-blocking is actually probably the best solution for this in every case.
Cut off every legitimate operation in these regions (including my own) from using your genuinely useful software. Software isn't compromised, saves on unnecessary work and law compliance. Then everyone with a VPN flourishes anyway. And then maybe it hurts profits so much that lawmakers actually decide to reverse course. Wins all around.
No dude, nobody asked for this law, it was lobbied by Facebook / Meta and doesn't protect anyone, the compliance burden shouldn't fall on the devs (who happen to be volunteers most of the time), they made a law, they have to figure out how to apply it (like I said in my over down-voted comment: hire a group of devs to fork everything, add the restrictions then convince your citizens to switch so they are compliant)
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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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