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…

Edit: To address whether it is likely that this change will affect users: Gnome is planning a stronger dependence on userdb, the part of systemd where this change is being implemented. https://blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/2025/06/10/gnome-systemd-dependencies/

Final Edit: The PR has been merged into main.

  • Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    5·
    8 hours 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.