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…

  • lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    SystemD isnt exactly a program but more of a group of projects, the only “core” SystemD software on most distros is the init system… Which you can run completely without SystemD’s UserDB system (the part being talked about in the post).

    Basically this means you as a user dont have to do anything but switch away from projects that depend on SystemD’s UserDB (like Gnome), not SystemD as a whole

    However if you do want to move away from SystemD as a whole you can replace your init system with another one, gentoo’s wiki is a good starting point for learning a bit more: wiki

    • Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      4 days ago

      Basically this means you as a user dont have to do anything but switch away from projects that depend on SystemD’s UserDB (like Gnome), not SystemD as a whole

      You can also just… not put your PII into UserDB. It can store clear names, mail addresses, postal addresses and now birthdates… but it can also just serve as an interface to /etc/passwd. Which conveniently also works with LDAP accounts (unlike your hand written /etc/passwd parser) if you’re an organisation that uses LDAP.

      This is the entirety of what UserDB knows about me:

      userdbctl user --output=json $(whoami)
{
        "userName" : "sky",
        "uid" : 1000,
        "gid" : 100,
        "homeDirectory" : "/users/sky/home"
        "shell" : "/run/current-system/sw/bin/fish"
}

      I don’t expect that to change with this PR.

      • lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        4 days ago

        KDE is commited to keeping the desktop itself SystemD agnostic. Their new login manager does depend on SystemD, but you can run KDE Plasma from any login manager

      • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
        0·
        4 days ago

        mine doesn’t appear to be? it says installed but disabled. unless i’m looking at the wrong service which is entirely possible.

    • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      Thanks for explaining it a bit more. I moved from Windows 11 to CachyOS (limine bootloader and kde plasma DE) sometime last year and that may be a bit above my paygrade right now. Based on what I’m seeing in the Arch Wiki it would seem that quite a few systemd components are in use for my distro.