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Systemd adds age indication ahead of schedule

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systemd is criticized of being monolithic (non-modular) and deviating from Unix philosophy[1].

Background

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systemd is an initialization system, a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system[2].

[Incident]

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In Mar 5 2026, Dylan M. Taylor, a developer and tech enthusiast, sent two commits to systemd (as a pull request) "userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records", commenting[3]

Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.

In Mar 19 2026, Luca Boccassi[4], a member of Systemd and a Microsoft employee, merged the commits. Lennart Poettering, the creator of systemd, known for having controversial technical and architectural positions regarding the Linux ecosystem, has clarified that this change is:

An optional field in the userdb JSON object. It's not a policy engine, not an API for apps. We just define the field, so that it's standardized if people want to store the date there, but it's entirely optional[5].

[Company]'s response

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If applicable, add the proposed solution to the issues by the company.

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Consumer response

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Consumer response is mixed. Some says the age is manually entered so it doesn't affect privacy, others warn about the slippery slope and the potential to add national ID on system boot or installation. Users also point out Microsoft's influence over systemd[6][7].

There was an attempt to revert the changes, and the user who opened the PR did provide many reasons why it should be reverted,[8] but it was rejected by Poettering saying:

[...]

please move your discussion elsewhere, you are misunderstanding what systemd does here. It enforces zero policy, it leaves that up for other parts of the system.

And sorry, I am really not interested in these discussions here. it's not the right place for this, and please don't bring it here. Thank you.[9]

Users have been migrating to Artix Linux, Void Linux, Devuan and other systemd-free Linux distributions.

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References

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  1. ↑ Russell, Sean E. (2025-07-30). "systemd really, really sucks". Archived from the original on 2026-02-14. Retrieved 2026-03-20.
  2. ↑ "systemd System and Service Manager". freedesktop.org. 2024-02-22. Archived from the original on 2026-01-06. Retrieved 2026-03-20.
  3. ↑ Taylor, Dylan M. (2026-03-19). "userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2026-03-20. Retrieved 2026-03-20.
  4. ↑ "Luca Boccassi". GitHub. Archived from the original on 2026-03-20. Retrieved 2026-03-20.
  5. ↑ Rudra, Sourav (2026-03-20). "Systemd's New Feature Brings Age Verification Option to Linux". It's FOSS. Archived from the original on 2026-03-20. Retrieved 2026-03-20.
  6. ↑ u/KestrelVO (2026-03-20). "Systemd's New Feature Brings Age Verification Option to Linux". Reddit. Archived from the original on 2026-03-21. Retrieved 2026-03-21.
  7. ↑ u/ChamplooAttitude (2026-03-20). "Dylan, useful idiot with commit access, pushed age verification PRs to systemd, Ubuntu & Arch, got 2 Microslop employees to merge it, called it 'hilariously pointless' in the PR itself, then watched Lennart personally block the revert. Unpaid compliance simp". Reddit. Archived from the original on 2026-03-21. Retrieved 2026-03-21.
  8. ↑ https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179
  9. ↑ https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179#issuecomment-4090834541


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