this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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I'm trying to understand the logic. I guess they think the kids are too dumb to use Linux.
So what if you're running Linux on Windows? Does that qualify?
The logic is none of these distros would do shit to comply with this, and enforcement is almost impossible. This is just saving face.
There were some people practically tripping over themselves to add all the prerequisites needed to support age verification. Instead of waiting to see how things played out, they just rushed through changes for things like systemd.
Adding a nullable "date of birth" field on a json doesn't seem like "rushed". The whole thing was massively overblown, considering it already had a field for the user real name (also optional).
https://systemd.io/USER_RECORD
While I do like the idea of saving face, let me ask you this: when was the last time something as mundane as reality stopped a politician?
Ummm, more then you think. If it makes them look bad then yeah. In this case I don't think anyone (even the big players) where pumped about this law. If they could spin it as a win then yeah, reality be damned. But here I doubt they even got much of a rise from distros that don't sell their stuff anyways.
I'd imagine most kids using Linux are either being actively taught computers by a parent who's paying close attention, or so smart that nobody is stopping them from doing anything.
I don't know what the Cali gov was thinking
But it makes sense to me, based on the commercial incentive. It's not that FreeBSD doesn't form the basis of products that will need to comply with the law (whatever Apple calls their desktop OS for instance), but FreeBSD itself is only for the leet.
No, you don't have to be a genius to use it, but you do need to be very weird, in that you want to use your own actual brain to solve problems, and you want to fully understand what the thing is doing, from bootup to shutdown. If that's you, you're a very odd person, according to many.
Probably because you can just modify the OS to say you're old enough. With a closed source OS you can't.
In reality it just means you can't use the OS as age verification, and will have to use other means if you're into that. Personally I just slap on a VPN and go somewhere that hasn't succumbed to this idiocy...