I tend to be more skeptical of Lunduke, but this is huge

> “Operating system provider” means a person or entity that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device. @early-whale-57281

So technically anyone who forks nixpkgs is an operating system provider. 😂

Or rather, nebulous enough to provide an escape hatch

Here's the actual Ubuntu mailing list post: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2026-March/043510.html

And also an opinion piece by me: https://heywoodlh.io/us-age-verification-laws/

I found the proposed solution on the Ubuntu Mailing list interesting for understanding what this might look like in implementation: > For this reason, I'd like to propose a "hybrid" approach; introduce a new standard D-Bus interface,

org.freedesktop.AgeVerification1

, that can be implemented by arbitrary applications as a distro sees fit. AccountsService could implement this API so that newer versions of distros will get the relevant features for free, while distros with an AccountsService too old to contain the feature can implement it themselves as a stop-gap solution. With major players like Canonical and Red Hat maintaining much of the Linux ecosystem, I don't see a way around this indirectly impacting all Linux users in some way.

I don't know, maybe I'm paranoid and realistically desktop Linux users are such a small subset of users that maybe they don't care at all and we're just collateral damage, but identifying such users could be deliberate.

And, I believe that for sure approximate age data is going to be abused by applications eager to profit off of user data

Honestly, I would be surprised if the Ubuntu derivatives (besides Elementary OS) followed Canonical's lead. Additionally, I doubt there will be any instances of this being enforced anywhere once the law is in effect because it's just not possible to scale with open source distributions

free desktop is big but they can't enforce that implementation with the current state of things

Would recommend contacting your representative to request NOT implementing a bill regarding age verification in operating systems. This site makes it pretty easy: https://contactrep.org/ And also includes the bills in question in CO, CA, NY

Found out through Ageless Linux's state tracker that Utah will be "enforcing" app store age verification in May: https://agelesslinux.org/map.html

I've been reconsidering my position on systemd implementing an age field in userdb or it being implemented in dbus to support distributions that are going to comply with age verification laws. At first, I thought it was generally bad -- but as I've been thinking about it, it feels like the most reasonable place to implement it -- instead of each distribution implementing their own bespoke solution to track age. This is especially a problem in an enterprise -- especially education -- where I personally don't think kids should be accessing NFSW content (obviously, that's relative) and if Linux has no enterprise controls around that, it's a less desirable platform in places like education or highly regulated enterprises. Which, I think is a big downside. While I am against the current legislation's inability to effectively empower the guardian's of children and instead empower corporations, I am not necessarily against parents or corporations implementing restrictions for children/employees where they deem necessary -- and tracking age as a data point seems like a good starting point (although, I am totally against sharing it with developers/corporations who will certainly harvest/abuse that data). Additionally, I think the approach of systemd putting it in userdb is ideal because then you have to opt-in by using userdb. i.e. on NixOS, I just won't be impacted by their proposed changes and my privacy won't be infringed upon. So again, I would pose the question, if systemd or dbus don't implement opt-in scaffolding for age verification, would it really be better for distributions to implement their own bespoke solution? And would it really be better to have NO safety controls in an enterprise or regulated environment while on Linux? Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on this, if you agree/disagree.

Sorry for the long message ^ 😬 I bolded the part that I would like feedback about

I think the inability to regulate anything on a Linux workstation is a big reason it's often not a choice for workstations in an enterprise. It's REALLY hard to ensure any sort of compliance and desktop security on Linux.

part of the problem is that I think pushing against the laws is better rather than moving the laws in a good direction

because they are not on good grounding to begin with

it is fundamentally about control and breach of privacy, not protecting individuals

I haven't looked much into the advising on hearings, but I imagine those that provide OS or privacy expertise are getting washed out by lobbyists or the like

Of course, in this scenario it’s more like letting the theater make a copy of your license and letting whatever the company who files the copies do whatever they want with it (sell it, horde it, leak it on accident, make excuses when someone breaks into the filing cabinet)

Who’s supposed to be in charge of maintaining the database of age-verification info anyway? Is that the state, or are they utilizing third-party companies?

we quite literally have a record if why this kind if legislation is bad, which is why the kind of stuff being pushed is so silly