At this point the Linux community either has to make good faith efforts to be in compliance with age verification laws or be permanently shutdown by the government.
I suspect it will be impossible long term for Linux distributions to exclude their distributions in regions with age verification laws since it seems like this is supported worldwide.
Correct me if I'm wrong. A shutdown would mean that many government systems will be down as well since much of the servers depends on the infrastructure of Linux?
As those are government operated, they would be exempt from those laws.
Clearly, children would not have access to a server used in the Pentagon.
This is not just about computing or operating systems.
When you look at this legal intrusion; it introduces a paradigm shift.
As it is, on Zorin OS, you can install any software you want, operate it however you want. The premise is that it is yours.
These kinds of laws and regulations that shift the burden from the providers onto the System Level or Infastructure change the nature of having a computer.
It becomes identity bound and permission based. You can only install what they permit, your identity is tied to the system - it is no longer your computer.
This matches the trend we see in subscription based services and software.
In Gaming, too.
We are definitely shifting toward a model where you lack ownership and can only use with permission. It makes sense that Meta lobbied for this - because it absolves them of the responsibility and shifts it to the infrastructure.
The Problem with Linux and GnuLinux for enforcement of such laws is that it is decentralized. There is no One Party to target.
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That is so not fair. Clearly a corruptive government. I just hope that it all backfires on these politicians that voted and enacted these laws.
This whole scenario reminds me so much of Net Neutrality. I remember when it had communities and news in an uproar, talking about the demise of the internet with speed throttling and companies owing faster speed lanes etc. Good thing that never took place. But here we are again with something much more dimeaning. 
In this particular case; It makes sense that Government independent servers have to be exempt from certain laws.
But you are correct in asserting that these laws are not well thought out and likely to backfire in many ways.
I do suspect that they are serving a purpose that extends beyond mere child safety. That makes it sound good for a proposal, but in reality; It gives power to a system while also depriving power from a population.
I'm not so easily fooled. Age verification has nothing to do with protecting kids. Its more about government overreach, data mining, and control of citizens. Basically, doing the very thing every futuristic movie that has ever been made, has warned us about.
It will work on most of the sheeple, this is cause most of the human sheep are asleep, dreaming of their own electric sheep. People are far to slow to wakeup, from government over reach, and their brainwashing social media psy-ops, that keeps people stupid and asleep.
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As of January 19th they're back to having two init systems on the one ISO.
MX-25.1 “Infinity” ISOs now available! January 19, 2026
...Making a return as of 25.1 is a dual-init setup with both systemd and sysvinit on the same ISO. This drastically cuts the number of builds we do and also brings back a feature that was uniquely MX and many users enjoyed.
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But verification age is for operating system and linux is a kernel. Then I am confuse.
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This whole topic is depressing. Largely due to the WTF nature of what will happen. It seems so poorly conceived, and done so with essentially no public consultation. It's quite mad.
Do I need to age verify my Ubuntu server installations, or my Pi?
Someone posted that it's about purchased devices with the OS pre-installed. Is that definitive?
If it is preinstalled doesn't matter with that.
But again: It is only in Countries who have these Laws - and then is the Question if an OS goes that Way. Zorin already declared to not do that:
What Ubuntu will do, is to see. And Ubuntu Server is not an ordinary OS; there would be the Question if it counts on that too.
Well, to be honest, the whole country is going mad, so why would I be surprised, if crazy policies are being implemented? Plus, so many people are out of touch, when it comes to computer related topics. We are entering the dark ages, and its gonna get so much worse.
Have this something connection with security on low level hardware and verification?
https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/1610233-linux-from-scratch-abandoning-sysvinit-support
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