this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
132 points (92.9% liked)

Linux

13059 readers
174 users here now

A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)

Also, check out:

Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Add a required birth date prompt (YYYY-MM-DD) to the user creation flow, stored as a systemd userdb JSON drop-in at /etc/userdb/.user on the target system.

Motivation

Recent age verification laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. require platforms to verify user age. Collecting birth date at install time ensures Arch Linux is compliant with these regulations.

This is just a pull request, no changes yet.

The pull-request discussion thread has been locked, just like it happened for the similar thread in Systemd, owing to the amount of negative comments...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rando@sh.itjust.works 45 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It’s very obvious this is just an entry point to degrade even more of our privacy and rights. How many times is this kind of shit gonna keep happening and people will still fall for it.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social -5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Was this also true with the real name field?

[–] rando@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you really don’t see this as a problem with governments instituting this you are exactly who I am talking about. Keep drinking the koolaid bud

[–] FishFace@piefed.social -5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Governments should not be requiring this of operating systems; it's absurd on many levels.

But actually implementing it is still pretty innocuous.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

need a "/s" on that last line?

[–] FishFace@piefed.social -1 points 1 week ago

Maybe just a clarification. Implementing optional fields is innocuous. Implementing requirements is not.