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Systemd preparing to comply with age verification laws (github.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Fork time? Maybe all the anti-systemd zealots were right all along...

Edit: To address whether it is likely that this change will affect users: Gnome is planning a stronger dependence on userdb, the part of systemd where this change is being implemented. https://blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/2025/06/10/gnome-systemd-dependencies/

Final Edit: The PR has been merged into main.

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[–] 18 points 7 months ago* (7 children)

SystemD isnt exactly a program but more of a group of projects, the only "core" SystemD software on most distros is the init system... Which you can run completely without SystemD's UserDB system (the part being talked about in the post).

Basically this means you as a user dont have to do anything but switch away from projects that depend on SystemD's UserDB (like Gnome), not SystemD as a whole

However if you do want to move away from SystemD as a whole you can replace your init system with another one, gentoo's wiki is a good starting point for learning a bit more: wiki. Personally I love using openrc but of you have no need to touch init files... Dont switch

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    Basically this means you as a user dont have to do anything but switch away from projects that depend on SystemD's UserDB (like Gnome), not SystemD as a whole

    You can also just... not put your PII into UserDB. It can store clear names, mail addresses, postal addresses and now birthdates... but it can also just serve as an interface to /etc/passwd. Which conveniently also works with LDAP accounts (unlike your hand written /etc/passwd parser) if you're an organisation that uses LDAP.

    This is the entirety of what UserDB knows about me:

    userdbctl user --output=json $(whoami)
{
        "userName" : "sky",
        "uid" : 1000,
        "gid" : 100,
        "homeDirectory" : "/users/sky/home"
        "shell" : "/run/current-system/sw/bin/fish"
}

    I don't expect that to change with this PR.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Does KDE also use UserDB?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    mine doesn't appear to be? it says installed but disabled. unless i'm looking at the wrong service which is entirely possible.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It appears to be active (running)

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    this is what i was going off of. i'm running cachyos (arch). am i reading wrong?

    https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/763290/what-is-the-preset-field-in-systemctl-status

    It just says that when installed it was enabled, and it has been disabled later on. As for this apache server just after install Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/httpd.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled) – admstg Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 10:50

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    Thanks for explaining it a bit more. I moved from Windows 11 to CachyOS (limine bootloader and kde plasma DE) sometime last year and that may be a bit above my paygrade right now. Based on what I'm seeing in the Arch Wiki it would seem that quite a few systemd components are in use for my distro.

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