- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.world
The latest changes implemented in the Systemd repo, related to or prompted by age-verification laws, have made many people unhappy (I suppose links about this aren’t necessary). This has led to a surge in Systemd forks during the last days (“surge” because there have always been plenty of forks). Here are some forks that explicitly mention those changes as their reason for forking (rough time ordering taken from the fork page):
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paramazo/systemd “The systemd System and Service Manager without age verification”
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ganitam/systemd “Systemd fork just before the Age Verification addition. Hoping more capable developers and maintainers do same…”
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GSYT-Productions/systemd-fork “The systemd System and Service Manager, without the stupid Age Verification”
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speedythesnail/unret arded-systemd “The systemd System and Service Manager, without the ret arded age-verification commits”
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ta13579/systemd “The systemd System and Service Manager WITHOUT THE FUCKING AGE CHECKS”
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r4shsec/systemd-no-age-verification “This is systemd but without the age verification made via pull request https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40978”
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Pingasmaster/fightthesystemd “Systemd without the nonsense: no age verification, no lighthouse built-in.”
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Jeffrey-Sardina/system “Liberated systemd – no surveillance. Ever.”
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HaplessIdiot/systemd-saneagecheck “The systemd System and Service Manager with age verification bypass and polling rate options for said feature”
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Queer-Coded-LGBTQ/systemd-fuck-california “The systemd System and Service Manager, but without age bs added in.”
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Codiak540/unshitted-systemd “A fork of systemd aiming to strip the Age verification. Sue me california.”
Hopefully the energy of this reaction won’t be scattered among too many alternatives, although some amount of scattering is always good.
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As someone who has used Linux for over a decade, I have no idea how I would even go about replacing Systemd on my computer; even if I wanted to.
Ageless Linux, now that’s something I can get behind: a script that I don’t understand, to accomplish something I think I might need, or just think is neat.
Unfortunately, I don’t use a Debian based distro, so I’m SOL on that front as well.
For arch… generally if there’s a core/extra official package, there can be alternatives in the AUR that list the system package as a “provides” alias.
From a quick AUR search, the systemd-liberated-git package is already up there. To replace systemd you’d install the AUR package which would tell you it conflicts with the official/core systemd package and ask if you wanted to replace it. If the package maintainer has everything right, it should just work.
Personally I’ll wait to see if a viably stable and well-maintained fork of systemd without age stuff shows up and switch once it sounds problem-free(ish).
I use Fedora, and honestly, I’m not even going to look for alternatives or work arounds unless and until my system actually tries to verify my age.
But that’s good to know, thank you. I imagine that if I do have to dump Fedora, I will probably go to an Arch based system purely for the AUR.
This is so incredibly dump
Let’s be realistic. All these forks will get us nowhere because systemd has become a platform on which major components of the Linux system depend. KDE’s new login depends on systemd, as does Gnome.
These forks are just a reaction to the latest addition. They will fizzle out.
Because KDE and GNOME can’t possibly choose to use something else…?
I’m on OpenRC reminding you systemd is slop you really don’t need for most systems.
KDE can be used absolutely fine with any other login manager, I personally use Ly https://codeberg.org/fairyglade/ly to login Info kde on wayland.
I liked ly, they changed at some point to not allow me to type in any username, had to select from list of valid users and it didn’t list AD users. No amount of futzing could get it working so I switched to lemurs. Just mentioning it as another good console-based-login option
That the Linux system depends on? No.
That your chosen distro depends on? Sure.
Sure, if you choose a distro like Artix that doesn’t use systemd, then yes. However, the major distros use systemd and will continue to do so because it is a critical component of Linux. Once the Linux kernel has finished loading into memory, systemd takes over in user space. Major distros cannot simply switch to a fork on a whim because they need to be completely sure that it is stable and will not cause any compatibility issues.
Let’s not forget that Ubuntu, SUSE and Red Hat are used in professional settings, so they won’t change to a fork.
There plenty of distros that don’t use systemd.
Slackware and Mint DE come to mind.
Because systemd isn’t required for Linux. It’s just one popular init system.
This like comes from distrowatch. Yes means the distro is using systemd:
- 1 CachyOS: Yes
- 2 Linux Mint: Yes
- 3 MX Linux: Optional
- 4 Pop!_OS: Yes
- 5 Debian: Yes
- 6 Zorin OS Yes
- 7 EndeavourOS: Yes
- 8 Manjaro: Yes
- 9 Fedora: Yes
- 10 Ubuntu: Yes
- 11 AnduinOS: Yes
- 12 openSUSE: Yes
- 13 Bazzite: Yes
- 14 Nobara: Yes
- 15 Arch Linux: Yes
- 16 elementary OS: Yes
- 17 antiX: No
- 18 NixOS: Yes
As we can see, the major popular distros use systemd.
You said it’s part of Linux. Which it isn’t. Just because some popular distros use it doesn’t mean it’s required.
Changing to another init requires major re-engineering and it’s not easy.
If they could switch to systemd in the 2010s they can switch away from it in the 2020s if they really wanted to.
Slight correction: I think you’re mixing up LMDE with Peppermint OS.
Linux ran just fine before systemd was created. It can be removed again. It’s not a critical dependency.
That was in 2010. We’re now in 2026, more and more components depend on systemd. For example: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/gnome-to-have-stronger-dependency-on-systemd.98260/
Gnome 😂 oh god, what a clown 🤡 you think gnome is critical. The worst DE that has been successfully forked more than once because it’s so poorly managed 🤣 and you’re still wrong ☠️ it works without systemd
That dependency can be removed.
By basically forking Gnome, sure.
Gentoo already has Gnome working without systemd
Gnome is not Linux.
Fair Warning: Long anti-systemd rant ahead.
Here’s a list of some fine, totally usable, and well maintained Linux distros that don’t use systemd:
- Artix Linux (offers 4 different supported init systems)
- Gentoo Linux (supports systemd/openrc, with documentation provided on how to manually support others)
- Void Linux (uses runit)
- Alpine Linux (uses openrc, most docker containers use this as their base)
- Devuan (offers 5 different supported init systems)
- Antix (offers 5 different supported init systems)
- MX Linux (offers systemd/sysv init)
Honestly, I was on Artix for 8 years and am on Gentoo/openrc now (been about 6 months). I never really got the systemd hype. I don’t even bother with it on my servers where I just run Alpine Linux. It’s just…not really needed unless the dev of a particular DE or app doesn’t know how to use basic GNU tools and/or doesn’t know they don’t need init for such and such feature.
Yeah yeah, systemd isn’t just an init system. People make that argument all the time, but honestly, that’s actually an argument against using it.
Systemd is poorly designed if the init component can’t be separated out from it’s various other utilities. If I could use systemd just as init, maybe it wouldn’t be…y’know, crap. But no, it has to handle DNS, cron, logging, login managment, etc.
Again, no problem if the systemd devs wanted to make it a suite of optional tools, but init systems are and always will be best if their codebases are as tiny as possible while still being usable and secure. Init’s only job is to fork other processes that the user specifies, that’s it.
Honestly if some software uses systemd, I’m not likely to use it unless someone’s paying me to. Heck, at work I use all sorts of shitty tools that frustrate me to no end in exchange for money.
But if I do happen to use software that requires systemd, on a system that I own, I’m likely to just go into the code, rip out the parts that utilize it, rewrite it, and recompile the binary because fuck that. Yes, I’ve done this. Most of the time, it’s not that hard. But I can count on one hand the amount of times this has been necessary, because the maintainers of these non-systemd distros are able to write basic scripts that hook into the various init systems and you just use them.
And if some major DE like GNOME or KDE relies on systemd, I’d just say, fuck’em. There’s plenty of DE’s that don’t and a multitude of WM’s that never will, and good, they shouldn’t.
Rant over.
What critical components do think require systemd? Name them.
BTW the community can pressure Red Hat and Novel to switch, their contracts have to be renewed periodically.
Gentoo with OpenRC.
Nothing more dramatic than Linux users angry-forking a repository
As somebody that uses valkey, I’m happy there’s drama.
Yup, and MariaDB, and LibreOffice, and Nextcloud…
This is one of the beautiful things about open source. If the original devs do something stupid, the community can fork.
I use Linux Mint DE for steam games which I barely play anymore so this whole Systemd/age-verification mess has next to no effect on me. It’s still really interesting to see everything play out in real time.
Speaking strictly as an outsider looking in, I still can’t help but feel uncomfortable and slightly worried about what has happened already. People who seek authoritarian powers over others will always start small, even if it’s “just a joke.” Always pushing boundaries and normalizing new boundaries that are further away from freedom. It’s never ending.
Fighting back against people who’s only source of creativity or identity is labeling and categorizing other people is fucking exhausting. And they don’t even make an effort for their one creative outlet either…
It’s hard to fight back because of all the people who down play everything as insignificance, “it doesn’t affect me”, “it’s optional” or others.
It’s happening in this very comment section too and every comment section where anything attacking our rights is mentioned. Our freedoms will be slowly eroded away, then these people will be affected and they will suddenly be surprised: “how could this have happened?”
There is no age verification. There’s an optional field for a birthdate, just like there already is for your full name, email address, and address.
I’m less concerned if it’s age verification or if it’s an optional field. The issue I feel is that it’s pushing boundaries and normalizing new boundaries.
I’m viewing this with a focus on authoritarian power and manipulation. There seems to be far less resistance to change if it’s not immediate. That’s why small acts such as “making a joke,” creating optional fields or reversing laws can be so dangerous. It normalizes a new boundary that can be pushed further. At the very least, it’s enabling the behaviour to push new boundaries.
Focusing on the definition of what it’s called seems to distract from what’s happened, the response to what has happened and what that could mean in the future for large groups of people’s personal identity, safety and freedom.
Authoritarian power and manipulation should not be enabled or normalized.
Not every tiny step is an inevitable slippery slope.
Minimizing small acts enables manipulative behaviour.
Since 2020 I’ve spent a lot of my personal time learning about manipulation and learning how to identity and handle manipulators. I’ve also spent a lot of my personal time teaching others how to identity and deal with manipulators in their personal lives.
After learning so much about manipulation, it’s hard not to see how much manipulation has been normalized in our everyday lives.
Ignoring the small acts means letting a new boundary be normalized. Minimizing those small acts is attempting to ignore them. It is important not to enable and normalize the boundaries that are being pushed.
Authoritarian power and manipulators will not stop pushing boundaries. To them, enough is never enough.
I’m mostly interested in how will they handle giving the info to apps. If it’d let me to block or fake the request depending on what I currently need (just prompt me every time an app asks, and let me choose the bracket), I’m good.
Tbh, most sites that are slowly getting targeted by age verification laws are things I’m kind of addicted to and have been trying to drop for a long time. A “scan your face or id” dialog would be a good reminder to finally cold turkey it. It’s one of the things I hate more than however much I need their platforms.
Wait… Is this what that notification was about
systemdwhen I upgraded my system just now? Fuck me… Although, if I correctly understand the current state of things, those California laws aren’t enforced bysystemd. That’s up to applications run on top of asystemdsystem.systemd“just” provides the data point “age”. Right?Regardless, let’s hope some of these forks collaborate and consolidate!
They should make the API call for apps to query that value a per-system/boot randomly generated signature, so it’s impossible to use while also complying with the law.
This is a stupid reason to fork systemd, this is an optional features. I can think of totally reasonable use cases/situations where such an optional feature makes a lot of sense.
Mind you, while I don’t have children, I have no intent to restrict their usage of the internet. Teaching them critical thinking and providing them a broad cultural exposure seems like a much more productive approach.
Merging something so conflictive and blocking the revert make it look suspicious, more after knowing Meta have invested billions on gettinh age verification everywhere.
Systemd has now vibed code and reviews, in the most critical process on most Linux machines. I see red flags.
Rewrite in Rust when?
Every single one of these will fail. Every single one. Because none of them need to exist. The only purpose these serve is harassing the systemd devs for nothing.
These people are pathetic.
You had me in þe first two sentences. Right conclusion, wrong reason.
Forking systemd is like forking þe Linux kernel: it’s a massive monoliþic mess noone is going to be able to maintain, unless it’s a group of dedicated people wiþ corporate support.
Exactly
People are mad even though the only age is just to have a optional age field for a user
It literally means nothing
Maybe they will, but this is beside the point. Regardless the forks, look at the wider response. I can’t imagine Linux users will accept this, not because of any thechnical impact or systemd haters hating. This is people actively preparing to make a stand against enshittification and techbros funded legistlation.
I’m not concerned with the wider response, I’m concerned with this specific response to systemd which isn’t motivated by any noble goal. These unwashed simpletons have coalesced into a smelly mob that needs to be quarantined. Maybe we can find a way to herd the sheep towards the thing they are actually mad at, but until that finally makes it through their thick skulls I’m fine with mocking them.
Why?
What is so bad about having a optional age field for user storage? This isn’t age verification just a optional age box.
What is the point of it? If the are doesn’t cryptographically trace to the right birth certificate for who is at the keyboard now it won’t do anything - kids will lie about age if there is any issues. If it does trace back that well there are huge privacy problems.
None of that is being considered here
The PR in question just adds a age field. It is optional but some people expressed a usecase for it so it got merged. If you don’t see a point it can be safely ignored.
It is a psychological reaction. The amount of digital surveillance has massively increased in the last couple years. US has just started, as you probably know too, discussing the possibility of adding mandatory age checks to any device connecting to the internet (that might fail due to its infeasibility, but that is another issue). So is this reaction really that surprising? People are afraid that this might be the first of a series of changes that make it more surveillance friendly, such as actual age verification. Indeed incremental changes would probably be the only feasible way one can turn something like systemd surveillance friendly. Even leaving everything aside, this is singularly the worst possible time to suggest such a change to the level that I would almost look for malintent.
Pathetic is implementing age verification in the first place.
The laws are just authoritarian nonsense, and the same nonsense thats been fought against for decades. It had nothing to do with protecting children then, it has nothing to do with protecting children now, and merging given that context is a failure on the part of the maintainers.
I am enough of a dick that I will shift systems I’m responsible for over to Devuan, AntiX, MX, Alpine - hell, Gentoo if it came to it.
But there is no verification. Just a standardized field in an optional component you can choose to ignore.
It won’t protect children, but you can’t igore the law. You can get lawyers and fight that way. However too many eevelopers live in CA to ignore and every one of them is at risk of the law going against them. Small distros can say they don’t have anyone who maintains it in CA so the don’t allow their distro to be used in CA. Large ones cannot ignore the law just because it is stupid and won’t work.
but you can’t igore the law
I didnt realize systemd was under the jurisdiction of California and Brazil.
Also, yes you can, and bring about a legal challenge against it for the plethora of reasons why its stupid, useless, creates new threat attack vectors, exposes PII unnecessarily, and so on, and so forth.
You want a California patch? Go for it.
It does not belong in the main branch.
Age verification bills are being introduced in a lot of places
Not this kind that have passed, no.
Edit: whole couple words missing.
If we don’t fight back they will become standard everywhere.
Instead of being mad at devs be made at those who passed and are considering passing age verification laws.
SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DEFENDING IT.
where do the maitainers of the linux distro of your choice live? I mean every single person because if even one lives in CA (Brasil…) you have to either ‘fire’ that person or follow the law for their sake. I agree systemd shouldn’t be the place for this, but systemd wants to take over everything and I’m sure some of their maintainers live in CA thus they feel they must.
Systemd has not implemented age verification
Also, you should absolutely tell your local government rep that you don’t support age verification. Don’t get mad at Linux distros for following the law.
systemd is not a distribution.
Its also not under Californian, Coloradan, or Brazilian jurisdiction.
systemd has merged a PR specifically for this use, so yes, they have implemented it.
Systemd is used by a lot of organizations and companies including those who want to operate in jurisdictions with the BS verification laws.
This doesn’t impact anyone outside of those places
The field is added regardless of your country, therefore all users are impacted.
Why the fuck are you defending this shit so much?
You are all over the place pushing a complete fabrication about what has happened.
Where was your performative outrage when systemd added the full name data field in the same place? That is far more invasive information. Oh wait, they don’t require that data field to contain a value either. It’s almost like none of the technical details of the PR have anything to do with your stance on it and you’re just big mad about something unrelated to systemd.
‘forks are harassment’ lmfao weirdest weakest shit ever
The slurs the forkers included in their descriptions would suggest that. I don’t suppose you actually looked at them tho, performative outrage can’t motivate that kind of minimal effort.
Why they censor retarded? According to translator is just word for disabled what i miss?
It’s seen as offensive, but I was surprised that they censor that and don’t censor “fuck”. Even the link was censored, managed to bypass the censoring by using percent-encoding.
Because fuck is a swear word, the other is used as a slur.
Depending on the context, it is a slur in English.
You mentioned translator, so I’m going to assume English is not your native language.
Retarded actually means slow or slowed down, not specifically applying to people. For example, in a cumbustion engine you might have to retard the timing to get the spark and piston to sync correctly for firing.
Historically, it has also been applied to people with mental or learning disabilities which then became a common insult used to imply someone was stupid. Once it became an insult, it was considered rude in it’s original context even though in many ways it is an apt description. As such, many auto mods will filter out the word regardless of context.
Yes i german. Thank you for explain.
Es bedeutet mentale Retardierung.
It’s a pretty bad slur in English.
Zurückgeblieben wurde mir auch vorgeschlagen aber das wird meines Wissens hauptsächlich für mentale Behinderungen verwendet.
It’s used for both in English.
So retard can mean “to slow something down” or it can mean “a mentally deficient person”
The second usage is considered offensive and for that reason it’s not normally used in speech except for scientific descriptions of something slowing down.
Im Deutschen: Es wird im Englischen für beides verwendet.
„Retard“ kann also „etwas verlangsamen“ oder „eine geistig behinderte Person“ bedeuten.
Die zweite Bedeutung gilt als beleidigend und wird daher im allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch normalerweise nicht verwendet, außer in wissenschaftlichen Beschreibungen von Verlangsamungen.
Good luck trying to maintain the mammoth that is systemd… why not just switch to an alternative init system and focus your efforts on contributing to those, instead of trying to single-handedly maintain such a huge codebase?
Systemd still has no age verification, so all those forks are absolutely pointless.
If and when Systemd adds age verification, I’ll move away from it.
But the recent change adds literally nothing. Just leave the field blank, like you always did with those for your home address and full name.
The age field is malicious compliance. It satisfies the letter of the law while being completely and deliberately useless for its purpose.I don’t know why we downvoted the correct answer.
It sucks and is stupid but the alternative is banning Linux. You wanna have ICE knock on your door for “harboring a foreign operating system that doesn’t comply with the Christlike values of patriotic Americans”?
It sucks and is stupid but the alternative is banning Linux.
Good. Have it banned in the one state that probably relies on it the absolute most. Silicon Valley would start to implode and the law would be changed very quickly.
They will not ban it on Servers or for Corporate use, but ban it in youth Centers, in schools, in public libraries, and everywhere else where kids could have access to Computers. This will create another generation of people who only know close source Systems, most likely from Microsoft, who will have no issues with making their Systems compliant to the bindig laws.
Systemd isn’t going to add age verification
!remindme 1 year
This isn’t Reddit
/whoosh
It doesn’t work quite that way. Typically you have a sequence of very small changes, all “innocuous”, that lock you more and more into the previous ones. When you suddenly realize that the cumulative change is bad, you also find it’s very difficult to “move away from it”. This is why it’s important not to give away a single inch, from the very start.
That’s why I think the law is bad, but it doesn’t really apply to open source software. You see the actual limit crossed, you can still fork the version from before that.
Even the law itself, as it stands, is pretty alright. It’s effectively just a parental control system, the OS needs to provide the user age to applications, but that age is just whatever you type at install, without any verification. In general, if enough applications implement it, that’s not a bad system to help protect kids without invading anyones privacy. Of course, it can be circumvented by the kid installing the OS themselves, but that possibility is a feature, not a bug.
The problem there is the slippery slope though.
That’s simply not true in this case.
With age verification, there’s a very clear cut-off point that you can see and act upon:
Age verification is when you’re required to verify your age.
Not just enter a number.And the way to fight against this law isn’t to “boycott” systemd.
Literally no one will notice. It’s free, so using it doesn’t support it.
And no one even knows whether you use it or not.
The age field is one step closer to age verification in a program that already has made it more than clear that they don’t respect their consumers. Not only that but it also opens the door for other distro’s to force age verification.
This is nonsense. Do you feel like having a “user name” field brings “real ID one step closer”? Just don’t fill that field or enter some bogus data - nobody is checking this.
a program that already has made it more than clear that they don’t respect their consumers
Could you elaborate on this? I don’t get it.
I think there is an intention to convey a clear message. I will be warching the distro’s. Red Hat, being an IBM company, will probably back this age verification farce. I’m not so sure about the community distro’s like Debian or Arch. Maybe even Ubuntu will stop short.
Despite being a minor technical feature, I think this will have a disproportionate response from people.
