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):

Hopefully the energy of this reaction won't be scattered among too many alternatives, although some amount of scattering is always good.

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...

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.

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.

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/

That dependency can be removed.

By basically forking Gnome, sure.

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.

Slight correction: I think you're mixing up LMDE with Peppermint OS.

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.

I use Void which has runit by default. you don't need systemd, like at all.

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.

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?"

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 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.

It's almost like the latest changes are unpopular or something... /s

I don't like age verification either but that feature is optional and it's up to the OS distributor to use it or not. Picking a distribution that doesn't use it is easier than building your own distribution with a systemd fork.

Optional as far as systemd is concerned, perhaps, but it's designed to support a whole suite of software which will expect it to be used.

They're also making dubious decisions about how it will be done, such as how they'll handle the fact that date of birth is PII and something advertisers will be delighted to know. The laws they're trying to support require very limited information, but they're storing far more than that and they've actively decided not to protect it properly.

However optional it may be, they're effectively defining the standard for what will be stored and how it will be accessed by all of the software which will use it

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.

'forks are harassment' lmfao weirdest weakest shit ever

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.

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.

Why they censor retarded? According to translator is just word for disabled what i miss?

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.

Depending on the context, it is a slur in English.

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.

Wait... Is this what that notification was about systemd when I upgraded my system just now? Fuck me... Although, if I correctly understand the current state of things, those California laws aren't enforced by systemd. That's up to applications run on top of a systemd system. systemd "just" provides the data point "age". Right?

Regardless, let's hope some of these forks collaborate and consolidate!

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