on linux age verification
last updated: this is my first article, expect my messy chain of thoughts and bad english.
tldr; age verification is bad, and it doesn't work.
systemd
systemd just merged a pull (#40954) adding birth date to the user records. other than giving people another reason to hate systemd, this pull really doesn't differ from adding a field to a json schema. additionally, anyone with root access can simply edit the birthDate field with homectl, which makes it unreliable as a source of truth for a person's real birth date.
simply put, this pull request functions nothing more than a age confirmation pop up on certain websites. it does nothing to enforce that you are in a age bracket, and it assumes you are being honest (which is the worst thing to do with user input, coming from a web dev :p)
ageless linux
ageless linux is a debian based operating system -- or, technically, it is a conversion script that converts debian to ageless, similar to bedrock.
while this is good, i suspect them of their motive. first, upon investigation, this website, and its conversion script is vibe coded. i'm pretty sure about the public opinion on vibe coded products, so i'm not going to further expand here. all i can say is this: when you only want to spend 10 minutes creating a website and a script that claims to solve a problem, do you really care about this issue? oh and, i'm not running a vibe coded script with root privileges, thank you.
second, this website have a "purchase device" button on the front page. do you really want to solve the problem for the people, or make money on this problem?
third, this website is apparently under the license "unlicense", according to its footer; however, there is no link to its source anywhere, i had to look up "ageless linux source code" to find its source. even in the repository, it is missing a LICENSE or COPYING file, which me question the site's creator's knowledge about FOSS even more.
age verification doesn't work
even though as you can see i do not support age linux, i agree with the creator of ageless linux's motive; that age verification is bad for linux. it is against the concept of free as in freedom in many ways; it creates discrimination in the software against age groups, reduces the people's freedom (what if they don't want to provide the info?), and is an invasion of privacy.
when faced in scenarios like this, people always find ways to work around it. whether it's creating an alternative solutions, or using fake ids, or simply just lie about their age.
i like midnightbsd's solution the best. simply ban users that's under this regulation. even though it is not a FOSS-y move (as it discriminates against regions), it encourages the people that are affected under this regulation to do something. if you want to use this software, the laws have to be changed. either that's signing a petition (in the uk or eu), or calling lawmakers (in the us), it aims to solve the actual problem, which is reverting the legislation, rather than still living in the gray zone, where nothing have changed. the people shouldn't find ways to live around the laws; they should find ways to change the laws.
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