Other states are going to have the same kind of laws...and some go farther than Cali is going to right now: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/03/many-more-us-states-are-planning-or-already-have-operating-system-age-verification-laws/

This is just the latest.

so now we may have a forked/pirate linux distros because people dont want to be age restricted and phone home.

No it is not. There is no way this is enforceable. At all.

I will roll my own distro before I provide my data to the state or the corpos

It really isn't.

I'm sure every ATM, every kiosk, any machine accessible by a child will be updated to detect and immediately adjust it's function accordingly without any issues /s

Nope. You can't enforce it.

Why can't OS providers say that they don't operate in California anymore and be done with it?

Just because a law is passed, doesn't mean you need to follow it. Just act like the 1%

I guess going onwards most people will have their birthdate on 01/01/1970.

This happens when the people who define a law have no idea what they are talking about.

Even our central controller device would fall under this regulation. Which is so stupid that it hurts.

Unless there are any real consequences from having an OS on your hardware that doesn't comply, I would just expect most Linux users to grab their install images from mirrors hosted out of state. Even if they amend it to require the mirrors to try and locate visitors to automatically redirect California residents to the tampered images, a VPN would solve that pretty quickly. This just seems like posturing and maybe testing the waters with public reaction, but I'd be more concerned about what the crazier thing is that they'll ramp up to next if people don't raise a fuss over this one.