Precisely. Courts will find that the situation where Linux users are exempt from the law, whereas Windows users have to submit their ID and any other personal data, can not be maintained, so Linux users will also be forced to give up their ID before being able to access the internet. This will also first come via commercial distributions (perhaps it can not be enforced by independent linux users, but the law need not necessarily work for 100%, could be 95%, and the rest are declared as breaking the law).
[−]lern_too_spel · 2026-08-30 Sun 10:03 UTC ·
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This law does not require non Linux users to give up their ID to use the Internet, so why would they make Linux users do so?
Totally agree. After the next big cyber attack, ganna have to kyc to access internet. It will be “for our safety”. Luckily now with ai the world doesn’t need me as a programmer so I’m just ganna stop using computers if they go full facist
As for the bill itself, it's one of those that gets passed because it is non invasive to the typical person, it's voluntary, and it should help some. There is no downside at all.
But 2 years from now a baseline has been established where the need to know your age when using a computer is taken for granted, and it's revealed that self-reporting isn't working and gasp there was this one kid in the news about something bad happening.
This is how it goes. This is one of the reasons the anti-gun crowd is so adamantly opposed to virtually everything. I'm not advocating anything with respect to guns here, but "sensible" measures were broadly supported and then turned against the owners who acquiesced.
An "exception" is two faced in this case. It implies Linux needs an exception to begin with and that the bill itself isn't absolute garbage and a direct attack on general purpose computing. Again, they establish a baseline with something that people are ok with.
Or more likely companies and people will just comply. It might give a little more fuel to open source from people who are ardently pro privacy that balk at an age signal bring implemented, but I don't think that's such a huge segment of users.
I think the upstream premise was kids using Linux to get around things. This could be the case, even in a world of the average Joe just putting up with the intrusion and hassles.
So really, both concepts can mesh.
After all, once compliant an adult is then not restricted.
So I run my app in a linux container under windows and I'm exempt from age verification? Isn't android linux under the hood? I'm sure the law is not so easy to get around. How does it work?
> These amendments redefine the term “operating system provider” to exclude any person or entity that distributes an OS or application “under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.” Any software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses satisfies that test, which removes the likes of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, and the BSD family from AB 1856’s scope.
[…]
> Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android remain fully in scope, with age collection required at account setup from January 1, 2027. A later July 1, 2027, deadline applies to devices set up before January 1. Whether SteamOS is in scope isn’t yet clear: its Arch-based system components are open source, but Valve distributes the image alongside the proprietary Steam client.
I’m slightly confused about Android, I thought Android the OS was open source but then enough functionality is added by Google’s app store to keep it sort of under their control for the most part…
There is an open source version of Android released by Google (AOSP), but it's mostly permissively licensed (pretty much everything except the kernel), and the versions of Android that ship with nearly all devices (even Pixel devices) have modifications that are not open source. It's not just the app store, it's the actual services exposed as APIs. Thus, projects like Lineage and Graphene not being subject, but Google and Samsung still are.
The reason Steam OS is a gray area is the question of what constitutes "the OS". For Android, you can't run apps without the components in question, so it's pretty cut and dry. Steam OS, you can technically use it without Steam: switch it to desktop mode, disable Steam, and run it as just an Arch variant; you can even launch games installed via Steam if you really want. But in practice nobody does that, because you would just use another distro if that was your goal. So, is Steam part of "the OS", since it's the main thing you see when you boot by default, and probably the reason you use that distro? Or is it just a prominently featured application?
edit to add: Here's a graphic depicting the general shape of Android. Pretty much everything except the kernel can have closed source modifications (and even the kernel will typically have proprietary drivers and firmware blobs): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/AOSP_And...
I know it sounds like a joke again, but the GNU/Linux <-> Linux distinction is kinda important semantically.
[−]ameliaquining · 2026-08-30 Sun 13:25 UTC ·
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GNU is not particularly relevant here either; age verification rules were never going to affect glibc, bash, coreutils, GCC, Emacs, or any other GNU packages that I'm aware of, and would have equally affected Linux distributions built without any of them. (You could imagine that in the future there's a mandate to somehow tie age verification into boot integrity mechanisms such that GRUB would be affected, but I don't think that was contemplated for the current round of regulations.) The projects I'm aware of that were affected were systemd and D-Bus, and even these didn't contemplate adding any actual age-verification stuff, just adding age-category fields to data schemas in case something else needed to use them.
Yeah, you could talk about Alpine/Linux too, but those are definitely different from Google/Linux aka. Android. A free kernel alone does not make a free operating system.
[−]ProllyInfamous · 2026-08-30 Sun 10:10 UTC ·
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I've been ignoring Linux since the early 90s.
Would always install some variant, think it was "pretty cool" for a few days, then revert back to "whatever MacOS was offering" (for my daily driver).
----
2026: I just finished building my third Ubuntu Linux machine, this year (gave the first one to my brother). An Ubuntu running a 5070Ti is now my main operating system.
If they’re American, guns are just part of our education system.
[−]kQq9oHeAz6wLLS · 2026-08-30 Sun 13:50 UTC ·
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Not as much anymore. Sure, trap teams are common, but we used to have school rifle clubs that taught safe handling of firearms.
Now we've decided that if we don't talk about something, people won't get curious about it. Sadly, without being properly taught how to be safe, that generally ends tragically.
[−]snackoverflow · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:37 UTC ·
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I believe the comment was in reference to the frequency of school shootings in the United States vs the rest of the world.
I guess it depends on the culture but I would think it's a good thing to show interest and passion for this stuff by talking about things you do in your free time like setting up Minecraft servers, whoever you're talking to will probably have similar things like that
[−]FallCheeta7373 · 2026-08-30 Sun 13:48 UTC ·
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No shit, AMD's opengl drivers on windows was so bad that it motivated me to try linux and become linux native years down the road.
Very true. I bought and setup minecraft server hosting in middle school, which got me enough money to build my first pc in high school. And the rest is history. :)
But 2 years from now a baseline has been established where the need to know your age when using a computer is taken for granted, and it's revealed that self-reporting isn't working and gasp there was this one kid in the news about something bad happening.
This is how it goes. This is one of the reasons the anti-gun crowd is so adamantly opposed to virtually everything. I'm not advocating anything with respect to guns here, but "sensible" measures were broadly supported and then turned against the owners who acquiesced.
An "exception" is two faced in this case. It implies Linux needs an exception to begin with and that the bill itself isn't absolute garbage and a direct attack on general purpose computing. Again, they establish a baseline with something that people are ok with.
So really, both concepts can mesh.
After all, once compliant an adult is then not restricted.
> These amendments redefine the term “operating system provider” to exclude any person or entity that distributes an OS or application “under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.” Any software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses satisfies that test, which removes the likes of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, and the BSD family from AB 1856’s scope. […]
> Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android remain fully in scope, with age collection required at account setup from January 1, 2027. A later July 1, 2027, deadline applies to devices set up before January 1. Whether SteamOS is in scope isn’t yet clear: its Arch-based system components are open source, but Valve distributes the image alongside the proprietary Steam client.
I’m slightly confused about Android, I thought Android the OS was open source but then enough functionality is added by Google’s app store to keep it sort of under their control for the most part…
The reason Steam OS is a gray area is the question of what constitutes "the OS". For Android, you can't run apps without the components in question, so it's pretty cut and dry. Steam OS, you can technically use it without Steam: switch it to desktop mode, disable Steam, and run it as just an Arch variant; you can even launch games installed via Steam if you really want. But in practice nobody does that, because you would just use another distro if that was your goal. So, is Steam part of "the OS", since it's the main thing you see when you boot by default, and probably the reason you use that distro? Or is it just a prominently featured application?
edit to add: Here's a graphic depicting the general shape of Android. Pretty much everything except the kernel can have closed source modifications (and even the kernel will typically have proprietary drivers and firmware blobs): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/AOSP_And...
Would always install some variant, think it was "pretty cool" for a few days, then revert back to "whatever MacOS was offering" (for my daily driver).
----
2026: I just finished building my third Ubuntu Linux machine, this year (gave the first one to my brother). An Ubuntu running a 5070Ti is now my main operating system.
Now we've decided that if we don't talk about something, people won't get curious about it. Sadly, without being properly taught how to be safe, that generally ends tragically.
1200 deaths a day from diarrhea in India.
Put it in perspective.
And most techies are already primarily on Linux and its derivatives.