Ageless Linux is Debian Linux, but with any age verification taken out. This is a protest of laws like California’s that require “operating system providers” to provide “age bracket information” on any user to any software that requests it.
Aside from how creepy it is that our operating systems are required to tell anyone who asks that a child is using them, this law is ridiculous. It’s a compliance exercise and if we allow it there will be more where this came from.
Ageless Linux takes a stand by refusing to comply.
The downloads page (agelesslinux.org) does not yet have installer images available, but there is a shell script (agelesslinux.org) that will convert any Debian based system into Ageless Linux.
I looked over that code. I do not recommend running it because it changes almost everything in /etc/os-release and /etc/lsb-release. Those are used by some software to identify what kind of system you are running—ironically, even this Ageless installer script uses them.
The installer is an interesting look at how this ridiculous legal requirement might be carried out though. Debian and other distros have no standard way of doing it yet, so this script doesn’t remove any existing software. It adds its own dummy age verification API command that spits out some error text and exits.
The site also has a lot of information on these laws. They track which US states have them, who is sponsoring them, and the official responses of Linux distros. It’s a good site for keeping track of this nastiness (their RSS feed is broken though).
Ageless Linux is Debian Linux, but with any age verification taken out. This is a protest of laws like California’s that require “operating system providers” to provide “age bracket information” on any user to any software that requests it.
Aside from how creepy it is that our operating systems are required to tell anyone who asks that a child is using them, this law is ridiculous. It’s a compliance exercise and if we allow it there will be more where this came from.
Ageless Linux takes a stand by refusing to comply.
The [downloads page](https://agelesslinux.org/download.html) does not yet have installer images available, but there is a [shell script](https://agelesslinux.org/become-ageless.sh) that will convert any Debian based system into Ageless Linux.
I looked over that code. I do not recommend running it because it changes almost everything in `/etc/os-release` and `/etc/lsb-release`. Those are used by some software to identify what kind of system you are running—ironically, even this Ageless installer script uses them.
The installer is an interesting look at how this ridiculous legal requirement might be carried out though. Debian and other distros have no standard way of doing it yet, so this script doesn’t remove any existing software. It adds its own dummy age verification API command that spits out some error text and exits.
The site also has a lot of information on these laws. They track which US states have them, who is sponsoring them, and the official responses of Linux distros. It’s a good site for keeping track of this nastiness (their RSS feed is broken though).
