userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records by dylanmtaylor · Pull Request #40954 · systemd/systemd
github.com
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. The xdg-desktop-portal project is addi...

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.

  • Whostosay@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    22 hours ago

    Is the idea here that an agnostic package manager will install everything within home as well, and so when that’s ported, and you have one of those PMs installed, it’ll pick up where you left off or is there any specific protocol for importing something like that?

    • utopiah@lemmy.ml
      4·
      22 hours ago

      Pretty much what nix (distinct from NixOS) is.

      That being said I would recommend NOT to do that because you most likely need 10 specific packages at most. That should take you 15min tops to install with few minutes paying attention.

      Just make sure /home is its own partition, or even disk, the distro hop if you want. You can also have in your ~ directory an apps directory where you keep binaries, AppImage, etc.

      For most people this is not a real concern.

      • Whostosay@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        21 hours ago

        I’ll have to look into that. I’ve been daily driving Linux for maybe about 2 years now, and I’ve learned a bit and have messed around with it on and off for years, but I don’t know it.

        I’m at a point though where I know that there’s going to be a time where I need to know to feel secure in avoiding bullshit like this post, malicious packages, general good security practices and what not, so y’all may see quite a bit of questions from me.

        Thanks for the info

        • utopiah@lemmy.ml
          2·
          20 hours ago

          No worries, if you want you can “test” that via a virtual machine, even a container e.g. https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ and see what you would genuinely miss.

          It feels like our computer is very unique, very customized, but often it’s done in very few key places, e.g. browser profile data, ~/.bashrc , etc and once you locate those, transitioning to any other system is way easier.