Linux phones, Linux gaming machines, Linux on Desktop and Laptops, Linux VR/AR, Linux watches, etc.

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.

And then the exception will evaporate overnight.

One gotta love politicians and their "solutions" and their longevity.

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).

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

Why do you think the next big cyberattack is going to have that effect, when the last N did not?

I mean the big one

This is pure speculation. You can't possibly predict what courts are going to decide in the future. And the Digital Age Assurance Act doesn't "force a user to give up ID to access the Internet", it requires age information to be collected during creation of a user account on a system.

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.

The baseline is already being established. In the majority of US states now you have to send your photo ID to a 3rd party to access "adult content". The conspiracy theories around the California and Illinois laws are senseless given the speed run the rest of the country is doing to ending privacy online. We get threads with hundreds of comments about California "fighting against privacy" and basically silence on the dozens of other states implementing far more privacy invasive legislation.

Everyone expects Kansas to continue being Kansas. Many users here live on the West coast and find themselves suddenly affected.

I agree, it's just a different vector to entry based on content. California is stepping it up to computing as a whole. Combine the two. Then the next step is actual ID, not an ID clearinghouse. But we're all paranoid for suggesting such things, just as people were paranoid that we'd get this far.

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?

I know it sounds like a joke again, but the GNU/Linux <-> Linux distinction is kinda important semantically.

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.

It sounds like since Android is a commercial repackaging of Linux it's in scope and Google gets to figure it out.

Google literally backed and supported this law.

Androi might be legally exempt, but the Android phone you buy at the store with a locked bootloader technically won't be.

The article says

> 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...

On the other hand, this law doesn't require "age verification" beyond requiring users to supply their date of birth, and the Steam application already does this before displaying content only deemed appropriate for those over a certain age.

So the only thing that really changes in the Steam case is the timing of the question, and possibly how and where the (unverified) answer is recorded.

so... we are back to a monopoly, but now government-enforced one

The government is very suspiciously constantly siding with huge private corporations. I have a bad feeling here.

I've been hearing about this since the late 90s.

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.

Yes, that’s the joke.

I credit Minecraft with getting an entire generation comfortable using command line statements.

when a coworker asked how i remembered the argument for increasing java heap size, i just said "oh from a previous job" :X

It’s three letters, one of which is common to all the extra options. Are your coworkers really impressed by this?

and I had to smile when asked about the intention behind the META-INF directory during an interview with JetBrains. Got the job, thanks Mr Persson

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

Agreed. I have had my tenure as a World of Warcraft guild & raid leader from many years ago on my resume for many, many years. It has always been a conversation point but managing 100+ people, who you don't pay, to prepare & train for complex, time sensitive operations including 25-50 people all working together, and all the management that comes with that, from DKP to class leaders, and so on. "Just think what I can do with paid people!"

I've never hidden my interest & passions, and I think the world is a better place when people are proud of what they enjoy. We're people first, after all.

The only reason I got into programming was to cheat at video games to get a higher score than my brother. Self-motivated learning is always more impressive than mandated. Take pride in your tinkering!

What, people don't just recall those from memory? I fall asleep saying -Xmx and -Xms every night

I chuckled for a bit, then realized you're probably right. It does get people familiar with it and probably helps a lot.

Literally why I got into CS

I find the gunplay in Minecraft very limited, so I'm surprised that is how you got into Counterstrike ;)

If they’re American, guns are just part of our education system.

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.

I believe the comment was in reference to the frequency of school shootings in the United States vs the rest of the world.

457 deaths in US history.

1200 deaths a day from diarrhea in India.

Put it in perspective.

No way it’s that low in India, either.

A larger number of people dying from an unrelated cause in another country doesn’t make these deaths insignificant. By that logic, virtually no problem deserves attention because you can always find something that kills more people.

You must not be familiar with the trolley problem.

The "trolley problem" is literally never a valid argument for anything because it purports to create an analogy for a real world problem but does so by creating a scenario that cannot exist, hence any argument based on it is nonapplicable to "real" problems.

You think that kind of scenario cannot exist? That is your reasoning for dismissing it? You’ll hafta do better than that.

The true version of the trolley problem requires perfect knowledge of the future. This can't exist in the real world.

So you’re being pedantic? Future forecasts and estimates can’t mesh with the trolly problem? If that’s your stance sure, you are correct. I do feel like you missed the whole point of the exercise though, and are hiding behind an absolute that is never achievable.

Look, nobody brings up the trolley problem because they're concerned about what they're going to do when a train car goes out of control.

They use it as a metaphor to attempt to make an argument about a different, actually real, situation. My argument is this is pointless because no real world situation will ever meaningfully resemble the trolley problem.

The correct answer to the trolley problem is STOP THE TROLLEY. "You can't do that!" "Why not?" "because magic" "well how do I know this magic is there?" "more magic!" etc etc.

What do you do if the dragon demands a sacrifice or it attacks the town? You fight the dragon.

The idea that "stop the trolley" or "slay the dragon" is cost-free is a wish. You've merely added a third horn to the dilemma. "Someone brave attempts to jump onto the moving trolley, risking their own neck" might well be the preferred choice; the expected outcome may marginally improve; the shape of the problem remains.

I hope you're arguing out of perversity, not conviction - such is valuable, and i did have to think for a minute. I agree that lateral thinking can be productive.

At no point did I say anything was "cost-free" or even make any reference to cost. It's extremely rare for the cost of an action to be at all relevant to its morality.

> Someone brave attempts to jump onto the moving trolley, risking their own neck

This is a completely different problem. The whole point of the trolley problem is to attempt to justify the sacrifice of the few for the good of the many.

The entire framing is about other people dying, not whether or not you would sacrifice yourself.

Spoken like a non-parent.

The real elephant in the room is that 60% of our school shootings are streetside minority violence spilling into schools, not angry white incels mowing down classmates.

As someone from a country where neither happens, I don't think this distinction matters a lot.

It does if you're looking to solve the problem at the root, rather than treat the symptoms.

According to UNICEF, globally, Diarrhea causes 444k deaths of children under 5 or ~1200 per day.

Globally, 1.2 million people (all ages) die of diarrhea every year.

India accounts for 120k deaths of children under 4 or roughly one fourth of global D related deaths or 328 deaths per day.

Assuming a similar ratio across all ages, India must account for 300k D related deaths every year of roughly 820 deaths. Not great (obviously) but at least it only accounts for 1/4 of all D deaths, not 1/3rd.

Edit - worth pointing out that India has 1.4B out of 8B humans globally or a little more than 1/6th.

https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-health/diarrhoeal-diseas...

https://www.joghr.org/article/75428-evaluating-india-s-inten...

I thought it was funny. Depressing, but funny.

They aren't but they should be. Many lives could be saved by making gun safety a mandatory class for all US students. If every kid had to learn the basic rules of gun safety, a significant number of accidental deaths could be prevented, and even many not so "accidental" deaths could be prevented because people would immediately recognize when someone else is being unsafe with guns. And gun safety rules are good things to ingrained in peoples heads when they are young. Similar to other safety rules like don't run with scissors, or put your seatbelt on, or don't pull sharp objects towards your body, or look both ways when crossing a road. If you teach it to kids in a serious manner the safe actions become a reflex action.

And part of the problem is that our entertainment media (movies, shows, video games) pretty much trains anybody who has not been taught gun safety in real life to reflexively point a gun at somebody when it is picked up, often with their finger already on the trigger (although some movies are better about this now). People see a gun on the ground, may not even know its real and think its a toy, "Hey guys look what I found" and immediately aim down the sites at their friend.

Good lecture but it's just a joke

I think you're optimistic about the overlap between "people who tit about with guns" and "people who absorb education".

I dread the outcome of practical safety lessons because, the moment you give a classroom guns, then some teenage edgelord is going to pantomime shooting their buddy, or escalate a playground beef.

People do not work the way you want people to work :-(

May i offer an alternative? Make gun ownership a tedious bureaucratic procedure. Reams of paperwork will filter out many stupid. Stupid exist who can fill forms, but it's a smaller set.

> I think you're optimistic about the overlap between "people who tit about with guns" and "people who absorb education".

The cavalier phrase "tit about with" is exactly the issue. People do so due to a lack of education about gun safety.

> I dread the outcome of practical safety lessons because, the moment you give a classroom guns

OP didn't mention practical lessons, and giving real guns to school children would be idiotic. You don't have to actually have a gun in your hand to learn what not to do with one should you encounter it. We have MYRIAD examples of non practical instruction (things like sex ed, chemistry [what happens if sodium is dropped in water and why?], physics [hey kids, lets visit a live nuclear reactor!]). If anything, the best way to dampen the glamor of guns instilled by media would be to make it a boring school subject.

> Make gun ownership a tedious bureaucratic procedure.

In many cases, it is. In my state, you can't hunt with a gun (or even a bow I think) without a mandatory gun safety course, and I needed a background check to buy the rifle in the first place. A background check that required a form.

Not to say there aren't loopholes, of course, and I think most Americans agree with common sense gun laws to implement more scrutiny.

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. :)

Yup. Taught me sysadmin and programming. No way I would be where I am today w/o Minecraft

This honestly is probably true, given when I help students write personal statements for applying to uni, the most common way they got into computer science is video games. I know for me 16 years ago that was true also.

I'm a lifelong Apple fan but my kids have Steam Decks and Raspberry Pis. I hope they grow to love Linux.

Is 2027 the year of the Linux desktop?

Wasn't 2020 the year of the Linux desktop?

Next year has been the year of the Linux desktop for as long as I remember.

It is always the next year

I put my mum on Linux three years ago, and os-related issues dropped to approximately zero. I'm claiming 2023.

The year of linux desktop lies in the heart of each of it's users.

Yes and the end of locked down Apple iDevices.

The thing is, unfortunately most people will not notice and be aware of what this means. (and which effect it may have on market share etc.)

And most techies are already primarily on Linux and its derivatives.

System 76, framework and a pinebook I am covered.

And it always will be!

Just in time for the kernel and its consequences to become completely hostile to anyone not paying for a frontier model. If I was 16 again and evaluating linux only to see everyone using LLMs to reason about the mess they've put themselves in I don't know if I would have even bothered. The promise of "you can just read and learn about it yourself" has been dead for at least 10 years, but LLMs put the nail in the coffin.

Linux has gone from attracting hippies to openly endorsing corporate closed-source products, something something live long enough to become the villain.