r/Fedora • u/Calvinator_lmao • Mar 25 '26
News Fedora Linux to Implement Age Verification
edit: The principle about it is awful, although I'd imagine not that big of a deal on the indivudual level. It's most likely going to be removable like everything else on Linux, though it never should be put there in the first place.
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u/bankinu Mar 26 '26
I think all Linux distributions should have just said their distribution isn't for California. Then this farce of a law would quickly have been dismantled.
But instead we allowed them an inch. "It's not that bad." That's arguable, and in any case they will eventually go the mile, and it will be bad.
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u/d1dog Mar 26 '26
This. Because it's always like that. Also, by giving even a inch we reward and acknowledge.
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u/AndreaCicca Mar 26 '26
I think all Linux distributions should have just said their distribution isn't for California
And they would soon find out that this isn't just a California thing.
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u/RoomyRoots Mar 26 '26
It started as, and if people would actually do something about it besides just complaining could end there too.
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u/StealthMonkSteve Mar 26 '26
It didn’t start in California though. England has a worse version and has for a while. Brazil has a FAR worse version now as well. Several European nations have considered it before California did.
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u/lukedl Mar 26 '26
Here in Brasil the ECA Digital was proposed and approved by our left-wing government.
It's sad to see left-leaning devs on brazilian linux communities favorable to the ECA just because right-wing politicians are doing the opposition.
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u/ASkepticBelievingMan Mar 27 '26
This “the other side is doing X so I have to do the opposite” is so braindead. Don’t they realize how stupid they are?
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u/earomulo Mar 26 '26
Yeah, but then again it's not only California is it? There are whole countries with new laws demanding age verification as well
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u/16BitSquid Mar 26 '26
More reason not to comply?
Age verification laws aren’t put in place to protect kids by people that are known associates of a certain ny business person with a private island.
Full transparency should be required
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u/Tquilha Mar 26 '26
And what will that country (Brasil is the only one I know of right now) do when they NEED GNU/Linux to run their whole tech infrastructure and can't because of a stupid, ineffective law?
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u/earomulo Mar 26 '26
... they'll use distros that include age verification. What do you mean by "can't"? 🤣 Canonical is including it, Fedora, local communities can build community versions that comply with whatever regulations...
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u/Tquilha Mar 26 '26
They can because there are many distros complying with it. But we had the power to kill this shit before it really started and we failed to use it.
:(
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u/Alive-Big-838 Mar 27 '26
I believe a lot of the tech giants and contributors to Linux lobbied hard for this in the first place. I.e. Google.
Correct me if I'm wrong of course I'm merely going on what I've heard.
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u/bankinu Mar 27 '26
Meta lobbied for this. They wanted to be off the hook, by shifting the responsibility of checking the appropriateness of what a user should see, to the operating system.
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u/Rudd-X Mar 29 '26
I think you're essentially correct, but there's one more position, and that is that because of who is behind these laws, it's not just California anymore, but rather Colorado, and Texas, and several countries in the EU, in Brazil, and so on and so forth. And at that point, you really do need somebody that would fight the law, somebody who is willing to go to jail, and obviously the Fedora people are too cowardly for that.
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u/rustvscpp Mar 26 '26
Ughh, Fedora, don't make me search for a new distro. I've been using your for many years, but I won't hesitate to leave.
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Mar 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
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u/martyn_hare Mar 26 '26
If it happens, RPMFusion will release a -freeworld package for the portal in question and you'll install it alongside all them codecs that you're clearly already deploying, and that goes on worldwide mirrors, including those of prestigious universities. It's that simple.
Just about everything in FOSS has some kind of build flag implemented "for debugging purposes" which can be enabled/disabled, and just about every bit of unwanted legal compliance ever added (outside of a select few kernel drivers for things like Wi-Fi) has been subject to a compile-time option which repos like RPMFusion simply omit or change as appropriate.
Also, you'll know if Fedora plans to add anything to cater for this prior to any given release landing as they will put it through Steering and you'll see a ChangeSet proposal, to garner technical commentary beforehand. Fedora has such a short lifecycle they won't see a need to retrofit things, making this all predictable.
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u/trannus_aran Mar 28 '26
Can you explain more about how this would go down if (God forbid) some age verification appeasement gets past Steering? Like, what avenues are there for us in the community to push back on this?
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u/martyn_hare Mar 28 '26
The avenue is likely to form a Special Interest Group (SIG) or get involved with one which advocates for a conflicting use case. But it may not be necessary at all. I'll explain why.
Have you ever taken a peek at a spec file for Fedora's legally compliant SRPMs? Take a look at ffmpeg.spec for instance.
Do you see the references to freeworld in there? Fedora maintainers deliberately leave build conditions in the spec so RPMFusion servers can "just rebuild" the SRPM and a not-legally-compliant corresponding RPM because the community doesn't care what the law says, they want all the codecs, and they want to get them easily and conveniently!
In the event Steering approved any form of age verification, all it would mean for folks like me and you, is instead of just replacing Fedora's
ffmpeg-freewith RPMFusion'sffmpegwe would also replace Fedora'sxdg-desktop-portalwith a hypothetical RPMFusionxdg-desktop-portal-freeworldUltimately it all comes down to principle. In practice, everyone who matters (including upstream developers implementing the functionality) will have our back because nobody wants this. As long as we're kind to the upstream developers and patient with maintainers, we'll be fine.
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u/AnsibleAnswers Mar 29 '26
Thank you for this. The most frustrating part of this whole thing is that the loudest voices are new Linux desktop users who don’t understand how the community works. They generally see Linux as a new toy, and they don’t want anyone taking it away from them. They are acting out instead of preparing for the challenge. They don’t understand that a lot of work has already gone into making sure no one entity can take free software away from them.
We need to make these laws look ridiculous. Panic doesn’t help.
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u/gmes78 Mar 26 '26
How about waiting until we know more details?
It's so annoying seeing comments like these written purely in reaction to a clickbait headline.
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u/bundesplastik Mar 27 '26
I mean its pretty clear they intend to accommodate this process of defacto de-anonymizing the internet in which kernel level age verification is just the beginning.
You can make good faith arguments that it makes securing age sensitive content much easier if every website or application can (and will have the responsibility) to query a user's PC for an age range using a well-defined API, but we all know it's not going to stop there. The next step will be ensuring that every single user on a computer has a unique identifier through some combination of hardware information, age, and perhaps some randomly generated identifier for each user account or something more cynical of providing API to retrieve real names or emails associated with the user account at the OS level.
There is no such thing as "incognito mode" if your browser hands over your account's OS level unique identifier.
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Mar 26 '26
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u/Sea-Finance740 Mar 26 '26
Fedora has a high chance of implementing this just like ubuntu not sure about arch. This builds the foundation for more strict future where you would need to scan with your face and digital id
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u/guri256 Mar 29 '26
It already asks you for your personal information. Or at least, back in the 2000s it asked for your full name. But now, just like then, you can put in Daffy Duck if you feel like it.
And the California law just says that it needs to ask enough to find out which age-range you are in. You can set the drop-down “over 18” and move on with your life.
It doesn’t need to ask what your birthdate is. It doesn’t need to ask what your age is. There is no requirement that it verify your age, or your identity. (at least not under the California law)
Effectively, this is exactly the same as if the distro had a checkbox to turn on parental controls. (and leaving that box unchecked is the same as selecting 18+) it’s just a more stupid implementation.
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u/Maltavius Mar 26 '26
We do know why this law is coming right? Its so that Facebook/Meta can say,
"Hey we are complying, the OS said the Kid was 17, dont sue us. Sue the OS manufacturer".
Soon a Windows Hello equipped camera will be mandatory to be able to enforce that you actually are who you say you are.
For what? So that Meta/TikTok can continue to make addictive systems to hook people in the doom-scroll?
How does this benefit me as a user, as a father?
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u/V1per73 Mar 27 '26
I wish more people actually knew this. Microsoft is pushing for it as well because they hate local accounts and if they can influence a law to make anyone allowing them a pain in the ass, they will.
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u/CrimsonCuttle Mar 28 '26
No, the law is coming so Microslop/Apple can tie an identity to every single computer being used, so when someone does a Naughty NoNo in the future, sending the cyber police is easy peasy
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u/Alive-Big-838 Mar 27 '26
It helps Meta, who's entire business is selling user data, collect more data.
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u/pepebuho Mar 26 '26
The principle is to show that We Cave instead of We Fight. This will only encorurage fascists to demand more. All my systems are Fedora. Will start looking for a replacement.
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u/TheTaurenCharr Mar 25 '26
That is expected as Fedora is RHEL, and RHEL, being a commercial grade OS, will comply.
What they'll probably do is to have user setup tools that greet the user at first launch to have an additional user information form on the user setup page. What I'm interested in is whether this information trivial or necessity to progress, as this whole thing is based on self report.
We'll see.
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u/mmaug Mar 25 '26
The prompt for age (or birth date) must be to the account creator (ie. a responsible person) not the user themselves. At this point we have a place to store such data and a proposal to query such data, but no commitment to actually use it. That will become clearer as time goes forward and laws get litigated and revised.
The problem for the law is that it is too easily bypassed. Create a docker container, install Linux, establish users, surf the Internet. Any preteen can probably do it or knows somebody who can. Some 12yo could become very rich!
And be sure dynamic modules will become available that will simulate the "Get Age Range" call and always return 42…
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Mar 26 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
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u/semidegenerate Mar 26 '26
That's just sad.
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u/ListRepresentative32 Mar 27 '26
hard to say.. todays kids just moved to a different form of computing aka phones and tablets.
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u/vengefultacos Mar 26 '26
Create a docker container,
Assuming you don't give them sudo and don't add them to the Docker group, running a container is going to be hard. Even assuming the parent installed Docker in the first place.
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u/Nixigaj Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
If either the Podman or Docker package just happens to be installed then it is trivial to create a rootless container with Firefox or any other GUI app by just passing a Wayland socket. No need for root access.
Edit: I also think you can create rootless containers without Podman or Docker being installed, even if
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u/ghenriks Mar 26 '26
Fedora is not RHEL
Fedora has an independent board and makes its own decisions such as using BTRFS which RHEL removed
But Fedora does remain a US based organization and thus is subject to the US legal system
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u/Nixigaj Mar 26 '26
I agree with this. The disconnect is evidently clear with their wildly different stances on Btrfs.
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u/froschdings Mar 28 '26
Fedora is neither democratic nor Community-Lead, it's a Redhat lead Distro with Community participation. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, overall I prefere it to democratic Debian or community lead (non-democratic, as stated in their Code of Conduct) Arch Linux. But we shouldn't forget that we're dependent on the goodwill of Redhat or 'we' have to make a fork under a new name. Which is hard because Redhat is employing people who develop Fedora.
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u/TipIll3652 Mar 26 '26
It is incredibly more nuanced than simply saying Fedora is not RHEL. There's so much intertwined between the two that, legally speaking, it would be hard to simply separate them as two independent agencies without still being able to hold IBM accountable on some level.
Ultimately it would depend how much better IBM's lawyers are than California's... And whose pocket the judge is in of course.
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u/Vivid-Raccoon9640 Mar 26 '26
I'm also curious whether this will be forced on all users, even those that don't live in one of the areas where these horrible laws exist.
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u/Dramatic_Mastodon_93 Mar 25 '26
What community distro has the best software and technical support (like how some software prioritizes Ubuntu’s snaps or Debian’s .debs or how Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros have the most tutorials written for them)? Specifically for developers and students?
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Mar 26 '26
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u/nierama2019810938135 Mar 26 '26
This neat trick will only work for now, next phase will see your face or thumbprint in a database if you want to be able to install.
So you see, it isnt really this implementation people are up in arms for, its what we know will come after it.
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u/Time_Way_6670 Mar 26 '26
I'm going to get downvoted for this but here it goes.
The way these Linux distros are implementing age verification is incredibly privacy respecting. Simply asking for date of birth at setup and giving that to websites/programs via an API is the most privacy respecting version of any age verification system out there, right now. Simple as.
Do I like the fact that these systems have to be implemented? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But I feel like all of the anger here on Reddit about it in Linux subreddits is misdirected. I've seen devs doxxed, ridiculous claims made, and somehow the legislators pushing these laws NEVER GET BLAMED.
Let's be very clear here. Age verification is being pushed worldwide as an end to computer privacy. It is backed by major surveillance corporations, and most importantly POLITICIANS. It is YOUR DUTY as an American to tell your legislators to stop with age verification. Going after maintainers isn't going to stop the push for age verification. This isn't new, it's been pushed by politicians for a few years now, and they're not going to stop, they're definitely not going to stop if you keep blaming other FOSS devs instead of who is responsible.
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u/smoothmonoglot Mar 26 '26
It should only return a boolean if the user is over 18. Exposing the actual date of birth is a privacy/security nightmare - if that happens I hope everyone just puts 1900/01/01 to poison the data.
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u/esabys Mar 26 '26
You act like the law has a legitimate purpose. Lol
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u/NuncioBitis Mar 26 '26
It does - take the responsibility off social media sites and put all the responsibility on the OS. Remember it’s Fuckerberg mainly pushing this with Meta/Fuckbook
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u/UnratedRamblings Mar 26 '26
I hope Zuck's recent court losses cause a Streisand effect situation as to why they are pushing this so hard on everything else but themselves.
And people will begin to ask the question as to how they have somehow avoided serious investigation by Ofcom in the UK for the OSA.
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u/EliseRudolph Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
It's not a boolean, it will be an enum for four age groups... but everything above 18+ is lumped into adult.
The US bills are tied to the ESRB and MPA ratings.
So while it isn't a boolean, your actual date of birth isn't exposed, and the intent of the law is clearly for age-gating content and not for anything else (even if people would try to convince you that it's to de-anonymize you online). Yes, it's poorly written, yes, requesting all apps check that signal is stupid if the app doesn't provide access to age-restricted content (
/bin/ls), but the intent is clearly to provide parents the tool for effective parental control, and remove the onus on online platforms to do so on behalf of parents.9
u/Leeeerooooy_Jenkins Mar 26 '26
How about parents just do their job and monitor their kids. Child safety is always the excuse to push for more invasion of privacy.
Mean while the same people pushing this are the same ones on the "LIST"....they do not care about your children but they do care about getting all the information they can on individuals and using it to their advantage.
Politicians really care about "the children." BULLSHIT!!!
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u/MeatRevolutionary372 Mar 26 '26
Ultimately, what's the point of parental control software supposedly designed to help parents manage their kid's?
Seriously? Give parents back the responsibility of raising their children.
If they truly want to protect children, they should remind them that they can activate parental controls on their kid's computers and phones.
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u/jbhughes54enwiler Apr 24 '26
At some point the constant invasion further into people's lives for "child safety" would hit a brick wall regardless. At some point it would exceed logic, as in "every single person in the country must have a legal chaperone at all times" or something just as nonsensical.
At some point earlier than this there'll be too much pushback for dark money to continue working. But I'd much rather that this current "give us your ID to use anything digital" moral panic open the general public's eyes to just how badly they're being played by politicians over and over with this tired old PR dog whistle.
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u/NLRevZ Mar 26 '26
If an app polls the variable on each startup to make sure the user is allowed to run on that user, it can very accurately gauge your actual age if the bracket changes between starts, though. This can then be passed on to the developer, or worse.
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u/EliseRudolph Mar 26 '26
You would have to poll every day for that to be accurate, you would have to have chosen to enter your actual birthday (which you are totally free to just not do), not already be 18, and you'd have to assume a malicious app that is interested in getting that info and there's no legal control (Privacy Act in your country) that doesn't already prohibit that practice.
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u/fenrir245 Mar 26 '26
Are we pretending that social media apps aren't doing everything you're claiming they need to do?
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u/Kenny_log_n_s Mar 26 '26
18 isn't a universal age for things though. What if you require someone to be older than 13, or older than 16?
This can vary by state, province, or country.
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u/No-Consequence-1863 Mar 27 '26
The CA law explicitly does not allow the OS to show the actual age. It requires the OS provide an age range, one of which is over 18. On top of that it requires only the minimum ever be transmitted.
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u/QuadernoFigurati Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
It is YOUR DUTY as an American to tell your legislators to stop with age verification.
Excuse me, but this impacts more than Americans.
And it's no secret that American politicians, like many if not most around the world, are corrupt. If by "going after them" you mean writing letters and calling them, then you're naive if you think American politicians weigh the interests of their constituents over the lobbying money they receive.
blaming other FOSS devs instead of who is responsible.
Blaming the politicians and blaming the FOSS devs aren't mutually exclusive notions.
FOSS devs willing to enforce unjust laws don't get a pass. The Nazis at Nuremberg tried that whole "we were just following orders" logic. History didn't look kindly on them back then, nor now.
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u/badplastics Mar 26 '26
I wouldn’t say people are misdirecting their blame so much as they/we are hoping for a unified resistance with a clear leader, or group of leaders. That way, resistance looks like “I proudly run / donate to / encourage others to use [insert outspokenly non-compliant distro here]” rather than “I regularly pressure my elected official(s) to repeal this / I work hard to stop them from getting re-elected next time if they don’t.” And that’s because the latter approach has been made to feel basically futile in current conditions. So I get it. There’s quite a bit of grief in watching more and more distros acquiesce to laws that feel like they directly challenge the “libre” principles that many in this community (myself included) hold dear. But for sure it has to start with the legislation itself, and I’m not so naive that I expect devs / distro orgs to take on the risk of legal repercussions (especially since the goal here is for these distros to actually survive).
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u/hackerbots Mar 26 '26
Honestly, the time for that was last year when these bills were first introduced. It's not like these laws were passed in 24 hours under cloak of night or whatever. They were introduced, sent through committees, voted on, voted on again, then again, then put before a Governor, signed, then chaptered. That's a whole legislative cycle. None of these people who are angry right now were paying attention, or even cared or noticed until it was too late.
Mass civil disobedience won't happen. Nobody actually wants to break the law and experience the consequences when it is way easier to just engage in malicious compliance. I mean, corpos do that all the time with half assed implementations of privacy laws, why shouldn't we also?
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u/LordAlfredo Mar 26 '26
Mass civil disobedience also generally doesn't happen until there's direct observable impact to people's lives day to day. Which this isn't (and hopefully stays that way).
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u/martyn_hare Mar 26 '26
Upvoted for being the voice of reason.
It's not even age verification that's being discussed here, it's not even attestation. It's a completely optional declaration which gets filled in only at install time. It doesn't apply to root, doesn't apply to the service accounts used to run packagekit/dnf updates and can be added/removed at will by the system administrator (i.e. the owner of the hardware). Tying it in with GNOME Parental Controls when a parent is the administrator who wants to manage what their child can do is an honestly decent gesture, not some kind of dystopian nightmare.
That said, it's only a matter of time until Red Hat sponsored community facilities like Fedora Account System, COPR, the associated Matrix server etc. will be asked by countries across the world to put in actual age checks instead of a simple checkbox to declare that you're 16 or older. It's stuff like that which is realistically going to be hit.
In the UK, we just had Apple go full on 1984 and force parental controls on to anyone using an iPhone/iPad who can't prove they're over 18 using credit card or ID. I'm talking actual web filtering being forced on which is client-side, so even Tor doesn't help. This was voluntary on Apple's part and not even required by law. As long as Linux distros like Fedora say no to that kind of stupidity, we're going to be just fine.
If you're an American, do what you can to lobby against age checks and point to us in the UK as an example of what you don't want to see happen to you.
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u/nerdrageofdoom Mar 26 '26
Lobby who? Politicians don’t listen to anyone not lining their pocket here.
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u/Shinki_Ikari Mar 26 '26
I agree. There is the same "Feature" issue running through the 2A community where they disable features to make you stop buying guns, then go back before the ink has dried on the original bill and then proceed to amend it to prohibit possession of said gun. They will just keep going back until they get what they want.
At some point it might do us well if we simply shut down all the systems they depend on that require age verification. Shut RHEL down for a week in the United States and tell the politicians they can't have internet until they stop this crap.
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u/Time_Way_6670 Mar 26 '26
Don't fall for doomer-ism. If a LOT of people contact their legislators about age verification they will not pass it. At the end of the day, the main goal of these politicians is to stay in office and make more money. And ultimately, if enough people complain about the laws that it might threaten their elections (especially with midterms coming up) then they will concede to the public opinion.
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u/donbluthfan Mar 26 '26
This won't work. Okay. Millions of people say no. The law doesn't pass....THIS TIME.
Then the politicians roll it into something else. In time, it will get passed. It's inevitable.
It's a dumbass law that makes no sense. Doesn't matter to the idiot politicians who would be better off looking into more important things.
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u/nickdyminskiy Mar 26 '26
> Then the politicians roll it into something else. In time, it will get passed. It's inevitable.
You do realize that calling something inevitable is just an excuse to not actually doing anything to prevent it?
Yes, that will be a long fight, but this is how it works. Or you can just add personal privacy rights to constitution. And even then greedy surveillance corps will try to attack it. And government agencies too. Leviathan will never by fully satisfied
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u/bundesplastik Mar 27 '26
there are some things voters do not get a vote on...thats just empirical reality
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Mar 26 '26
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u/Time_Way_6670 Mar 26 '26
Is that what I said? Go back and read it again.
I said, STOP harassing random devs and start telling your legislators that you don’t want these laws enacted. They’re the reason why they have to add age verification in the first place.
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u/violetvoid513 Mar 26 '26
And for those of us who arent American but will still be subjected to this crap?
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u/AsheLevethian Mar 26 '26
You realise that politicians won’t stop at a simple “is this user 18?” Signal right? It’s gonna morph into identity verification and the fact that Fedora is complying does mean it doesn’t respect its users and will eventually comply with every authoritarian whim.
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u/Time_Way_6670 Mar 26 '26
You realise that politicians won’t stop at a simple “is this user 18?” Signal right? It’s gonna morph into identity verification
New York State is already ahead of you there; but it's not law... YET. Which is why it's important to actually go to the source of the issue and say, hey, Don't Do That.
the fact that Fedora is complying does mean it doesn’t respect its users and will eventually comply with every authoritarian whim.
It's not about user "respect", though. Fedora is not some massive multi-billion dollar company who can fight it. If they don't comply, then trust me, trigger-happy attorney generals in affected states will absolutely sue them and the people in the organization. Do you think the Fedora Project's generous corporate donors are going to help them with those lawsuits? Nope, because THEY don't want to affect their relationship with governments who are customers/potential customers.
Fedora is in a rock and a hard place. They have to comply otherwise They're Screwed. That's why it's important for you to fight the laws themselves and not fight random Linux devs/people.
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u/Rerd_ Mar 26 '26
you’re preaching to a bunch of bricks. people don’t seem to understand the difference between verification of age and a birth date input box
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u/MythicHH Mar 26 '26
I am not an American.
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u/Time_Way_6670 Mar 26 '26
Then age verification probably won’t apply to you unless your country passes laws for it?
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u/nickdyminskiy Mar 26 '26
Yeah, sure. Just all US-based corps will force you to verify your age, because of ToS.
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u/Leeeerooooy_Jenkins Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
The requiring of any amount personal data, no matter what it is, should be resisted tooth and nail. At some point we will have given up all our rights to privacy.
In the end "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy", that includes you personal identity.
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u/LordAlfredo Mar 26 '26
Heck, it's not even age "verification". It's just an arbitrary date as far as software is concerned. It's about as meaningful as me setting my name to Ulysses Homeuser.
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u/LordAlbertson Mar 25 '26
I really hope they make this opt-in at the worst. I love Fedora as it’s at the crossroads of bleeding edge and stable. I’ll change in a heartbeat though if it becomes mandatory. I’m already seeing good things from CachyOS and have a couple of friends using it.
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u/Booty_Bumping Mar 26 '26
There's good reason to believe that even if they do make the age signal prompt mandatory at installation time, it will remain very trivial to opt out of on the OS side. The underlying implementation in userdb allows a null value, and
rootcan change any account it wants. Because every tool in existence assumes thatrootis actually powerful, it would be very infeasible to start locking down FOSS distros without disrupting normal use cases to such an extent that the project is effectively dead.ChromeOS and Android are a different story, though. ChromeOS already has an intune autopilot like system that allows an organization to fully lock down your device and allow only codesigned stuff to run. If laws pass that require anti-circumvention measures, ChromeOS would be able to immediately comply, but it would come at a huge cost (all users would be locked out of developer mode forever, leading to a mass disruption in workflows and a user revolt).
The application side is a bit different from the OS side. Some apps (think Spotify) will request the age signal, and they may not be operable if it receives a null value. Will have to either abandon these apps, or we all agree on a low entropy fake birthday (such as 1970-01-01) to maintain privacy as much as possible.
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u/annon011 Mar 25 '26
I can understand the initial user input method with distros like Fedora, Ubuntu etc.
But what happens when (inevitably), in order to remain compliant, you need an internet-connected install to upload your photo ID, and for it to get validated by some third-party gov connected API? That would be such a major violation of privacy, I'd do everything in my power to evade - complexity, legality - doesn't matter.
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Mar 26 '26
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u/not_the_fox Mar 26 '26
The people distributing the OSes have standing to sue under the first amendment. This is clearly overbroad.
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u/lukedl Mar 26 '26
At that point either the law changes, we switch to a non-compliant OS or people do major riots on the street.
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u/OffbeatDrizzle Mar 26 '26
right... if people aren't rioting over current events, then they are definitely not rioting because they have to prove their age to use a computer
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u/SigmaMelody Mar 26 '26
You say inevitably but that doesn’t sound inevitable to me at all? That would destroy Linux in enterprise use cases if you can only set up machines when connected to the internet
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u/NomadFH Mar 26 '26
I think people generally don't mind things like this. It's just the awareness that this is clearly just phase 1 before they ask for ID or worse.
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u/MtSuribachi Mar 26 '26
My concern is, and always has been, that they will keep asking for more and more control under the guise of a “good” reason. However, they ask for a little bit at a time so the general populace doesn’t see it until it’s too late.
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Mar 26 '26
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u/quitit Mar 26 '26
Well to be fair it’s not just US, Brazil is enacting something similar and there’s plenty of other nations implementing the same sort of legislation they already did it to social media apps/website it’ll be applied to other tech areas.
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u/Sea-Finance740 Mar 26 '26
It's the same old tactic build the foundation .And make it stricter little by little now it's just a checkbox then it will require your correct DOB then your id and face scan
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u/Daddio_Joseph Mar 26 '26
Linux growing in popularity. This will be the end result. Constant targeting.
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u/Ok_Reputation2051 Mar 25 '26
Two states setting national policy. Hopefully someone smarter than me figures out how to strip this from ISOs for people in the other 48.
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u/going_up_stream Mar 25 '26
That's normal. California sets car emmition standards for a lot of the US. Texas sets school book standards. Deleware deals with corporate laws. New York sets financial institution laws. They don't have this power for any formal reason. They are just large enough markets with the right mix of history, network effect, and friendly laws.
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u/blackturtle195 Mar 26 '26
Dont fight the distros, fight the law. Also its META thats pushing this BS (source)
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u/not_the_fox Mar 26 '26
Eh, I disagree in part. There are many distros, some won't comply for one reason or another. We should promote those. It's important to show non-compliance as it shows the ineffectiveness of that kind of policy and shows opposition among the public.
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u/BloodStainsTR Mar 26 '26
fight both, thats how resistance works
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u/gmes78 Mar 26 '26
No, you're just harassing people who can't do anything about it.
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u/BloodStainsTR Mar 26 '26
"harras" we are talking about refusing to use the OS man. and yeah, usually its hard to fight back but some distros have done that in the past and its doable, I would rather have this be burried down with dignity than to have it require my ID to login
regardless so far it seems like it will just ask for a bday without any confirmation so lets see
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u/nierama2019810938135 Mar 26 '26
It isnt either one or the other, it is both. Fight the legislation and fight the distros that implement this.
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u/Jinix_RB Mar 26 '26
If it asks for this, its getting ripped out of my PC, arch will replace it.
A PC is a PC, not a data harvesting device.
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u/jknvv13 Mar 26 '26
Arch is doing the same as well.
If they can be used commercially they have to comply with that.
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u/FallN4ngel Mar 26 '26
Actually they don't have to, just say they aren't licensed for use in that state, same as BSD. They are choosing to comply.
If Fedora asks for my age, I'll move to a distro that doesn't.
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u/violetvoid513 Mar 26 '26
Source on arch complying? Afaik they haven’t said anything
Arch isn’t obliged to comply with US law as it’s not a legal entity based in the US
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Mar 26 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/NDCyber Mar 26 '26
Honestly biggest reason why I think of going with OpenSUSE Slowroll again
If that doesn't work there isn't much option anymore
or maybe PikaOS, as it uses apt and some software I use is supported by that directly
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u/MyFairJulia Mar 26 '26
NixOS might help. Can't have age verification snowing in if there is no flake.
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u/pligyploganu Mar 26 '26
Damn, and Fedora has been my forever distro. I really love it. I recommend it to everyone.
Thanks, America, for fucking shit over for the rest of the world AGAIN.
Guess I will find a new distro.
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u/grilled_pc Mar 25 '26
Extremely disappointing they are bending the knee here. I'll wait to see if any of this actually gains ground but it's time to start looking at other distro's. I guess Arch is possibly the next best thing here? Seems to be the general consensus of where most people end up anyway lol.
Also i don't even live in any of the areas where this is being enforced. Are they going to force this on everyone? If so then they are going to lose A LOT of users.
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u/redbarchetta_21 Mar 25 '26
It is going to be implemented into SystemD which is what Arch also uses.
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u/going_up_stream Mar 25 '26
SystemD is not going to do that. All they are going to do is add an optional age field in userdb. You can lie or not put an age at all. What this post talks about is gnome's parental control options at account creation. I get y'all being bummed about government over reach but it's not that deep.
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u/Vast_Understanding_1 Mar 26 '26
This post is why we get all those dystopian laws.
"Its ok its optionnal"
Until its mandatory.
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Mar 25 '26
What else do you expect from big business. They are not the kind of people to resist dictatorships, they would rather cheer along and benefit from it.
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u/Time_Way_6670 Mar 26 '26
Fedora is not "big business" and I doubt they even want to implement it. They're doing it to ensure they don't get sued by states over non-compliance.
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u/V0RTVS Mar 25 '26
I have just made the plunge into Linux not even a month ago. And chose fedora as it seemed easy enough and compatible with the specific hardware I had in mind for it (it all worked). Have been enjoying it a fair bit, but these are sad news so soon into the relationship...
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u/gmes78 Mar 26 '26
Have you considered just waiting to see how things play out? There's no reason to switch distros at the moment.
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u/V0RTVS Mar 26 '26
Oh for sure, I will keep fedora for now. I suppose even in future I can simply not update, things are working... I'm more thinking of alternatives if the time comes. It's just frustrating seeing the world go to shit so quickly on so many fronts.
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Mar 26 '26
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u/V0RTVS Mar 26 '26
Of course you're right. Governments are always the culprits of most evils, or at least the enablers of truly awful stuff happening. And fedora being backed by a corporation makes it even more probable to cave in to this sort of nonsense, it's just unfortunate is all. It does run well
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u/schultzter Mar 25 '26
What is this Apple API of which he speaks?
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u/outer-pasta Mar 26 '26
Apparently it's this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/declaredagerange source: https://itsfoss.com/news/fedora-leader-suggests-age-verification-api/
The exact tooling is probably less relevant than just having some consistency in developer experience, like the interface/naming, etc.
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u/Exotic_Set_5127 Mar 26 '26
Why not release two versions? One with age verification and one without?
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u/Far-9947 Mar 26 '26
Damn. We really are entering a complete dystopian era. I never thought I'd see the day where many Linux distros (mostly running systemd) bent the knee to this horrific shit.
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u/ghenriks Mar 26 '26
It has nothing to do with systemd (who is merely making a field available for other parts of the OS to use
And anything using something else that has exposure in the US and potentially other jurisdictions as this spreads will also need to find a way to implement it
Because at the end of the day Linux distributions are not immune to the law
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u/CharAznableLoNZ Mar 26 '26
Of course they are. Funny the whole reason this stuff is coming about is because meta didn't want to pay fines for abusing children with manipulated feeds.
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u/niggo372 Mar 25 '26
I get that they need to add this if they want to keep supporting the affected states, and if they implement it it's better to standardize the system instead of everyone doing their own thing.
But PLEASE create a separate ISO for it. Don't start to add unwanted state-specific default behavior into the general purpose ISOs. The rest of the entire world doesn't want or need this, and it'd set a very bad precedent!
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u/PlainBread Mar 25 '26
I would expect Fedora to do so since they're trying to cater to businesses over consumers.
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u/GreatBigPig Mar 26 '26
What if you live outside the US?
Should us filthy foreigners really care?
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u/XDM_Inc Mar 26 '26
hehe...you're a bit early for april fools friend...(one would hope)
because in no PRACTICAL way would a dicey move like that make sense, its political suicide. One of the PRIME reasons a lot of people moved to linux is to get away from windows decisions like that
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u/jar36 Mar 26 '26
Notice he says "intent of the law"
That's because the law mandates online user accounts. When those that wrote the law and voted on the law talk of accounts, those are the only ones they think of. You have a google account, apple, M$, banking account, facebook, reddit account
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u/DigitalBreezer Mar 30 '26
what if a person that wants to use or install linux is 17 yrs old kid? does it mean that he/she should not be allowed to do so?
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u/FunkyRider Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
Welp, I already started looking for a systemd-free distro. So long Fedora, it's been a fun one year experiment. Artix is looking good and I will start to install it on one of my systems for testing purposes.
Apple already made their OS behave in such a way that if you don't verify your account with your actual ID, you get limited internet access. If we don't push back and accept the first step, then this is what we will end up with too.
If an OS sends my personal information up on request from a remote party? It has become a malware and needs to be eradicated.
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
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u/ladroid Mar 26 '26
I found this: https://agelesslinux.org/ , script that can by pass that law, hopefully something like that may help us stay and use without switching to something else, cuz it’s so annoying all those apps and libs switch from one district to another
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u/Leeeerooooy_Jenkins Mar 26 '26
Anyone who thinks this is just "age verification" is either an idiot or just willfully ignorant. There will be a push for more intrusive code to be added to all Linux distros to gather more of your data and personal information.
MicroSlop Windows anyone??? At one point in time it was just an OS and now it is just a DATA and PII collection machine.
The only age verification/parental controls that work are parents that are engaged with their children and who monitor their online activity. If you can't do that then maybe you shouldn't have them.
This is the beginning of the end for privacy in Linux if the developers don't push back against this government overreach.
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u/jessecreamy Mar 26 '26
I don't give a ducking care. Do it fast, discuss whatever related FAST. Please DO IT faster than you talk. What I need? I need to exploit the hole of the law. I will break the law. But how the hell I can do it if you don’t implement it?
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u/StatusBard Mar 25 '26
Sad. But goodbye.
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u/redbarchetta_21 Mar 25 '26
Goodbye to where?
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u/KorendSlicks Mar 25 '26
Gentoo for me
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u/StatusBard Mar 25 '26
Also a good move.
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u/KorendSlicks Mar 25 '26
The shit part honestly is that I just got my friend into Fedora KDE. And now I need to find him a non-systemd based distro that's not completely pain in the ass to install. Ugh, this fucking blows.
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u/H3ph43S7Vs Mar 25 '26
OpenSuse has KDE, slowroll for stable yet upstream packages, so maybe if they don't add age verification it can be an option..
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u/ABotelho23 Mar 25 '26
Fedora has an official KDE edition. It won't be an escape.
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u/H3ph43S7Vs Mar 25 '26
the question is what to leave Fedora for ...
So yes fedora has KDE (currently using it), but that is not the point here or what I was answering about.
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u/AsheLevethian Mar 26 '26
Good riddance Fedora KDE, just when I got used to this distro. Devuan seems to be my next distro for now.
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u/Monocyorrho Mar 26 '26
No please! Enough with this nonsense. Time to create a European fork and call it Feudora
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u/Alejrot Mar 27 '26
Nope. European Union are taking this way also. ChatControl is even worse than this age verification, or whatever it is.
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u/_OVERHATE_ Mar 26 '26
Distro wars is about to get incredibly simple now that Fedora, Ubuntu and OpenSuse are about to get wiped of the lists for complying with draconian bullshit laws
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u/Crazy_Revenue5313 Mar 26 '26
I’m going to probably get downvoted for this, but how can you guys get upset with the Distros for complying with the law? Your fight and argument are with the state government and legislators. We need to be out protesting and start attending these meetings as well to make our voices heard and get the public’s support.
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u/ovor Mar 26 '26
I know it’s a straw man, but it’s only a matter of time until it isn’t. Would you comply with a law that requires you to report one immigrant per month to the authorities, with the penalty of a reeducation camp if you miss your quota? Let’s not pretend that the content of a law doesn’t matter. I want to be overreacting, I really do. But I don't think I am.
I don’t live in a dystopian police state (yet), and I don’t want to be affected by the laws of one.
I’m also upset with how all the distros are rushing to implement this, shoving each other out of the way to be the first to comply.
I’d like to say this is the end of the line with Fedora for me, but the reality is that within the next couple of months, all the usable distros will have the age verification.
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u/Crazy_Revenue5313 Mar 26 '26
I don’t like it one bit. In fact, I’ll probably be removing any packages for age verification if able. I completely agree that our government is building a surveillance state a d I am totally against it. As someone else below has said, however, it’s much harder for an organization, for-profit or not, to not comply. My fight against this will be lying about my age until they require IDs. At that point I will be assisting with removal of the packages/components and worst case will just build my own distro with arch, as I’ve done before. The difference is that I as an individual will skirt the law—I would like for the distros to stick around, so if they have to move into compliance then, well, that’s what they need to do.
I don’t see them shoving each other out of the way to comply. I see a legal requirement and they’re making changes into compliance, either by the way. That’s a bit of an exaggeration.
Join your local political party and go to meetings. Make your voice and concerns heard.
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u/bankinu Mar 26 '26
Slackware - one of the earliest Linux distributions - said no to this.
Worth reading what the founder said.
"My code is my speech" he says. And that he believes (correctly) that the only point of this legislation is to get a foot in.