@BraveSmoke Down for the debbies hahaha.
MX devs have stated they have no intention of doing age verify unless they absolutely have to. What that means exactly, not a clue. But at least they aren't going to just cuz something may happen.
On Age Verification: There are those that think we need to make a position known on age verification. So here you go: While we wait on court challenges and to see if and how these laws apply to non-commercial open source operating systems and applications, let me assure users that no one on the team at MX wants to implement something like age verification. California’s law, which is what most people are upset about at the moment, isn’t even really age verification, but self-reporting. There is no external validation or even identification required, and not even really an actual age, but age ranges. Other states and countries may be more of a problem, with some (including California) placing burdens on repository infrastructure and raising questions as to whether repositories qualify as “stores” under these laws. These are real questions, and it really is wise to see if these laws survive court challenges.
An increasing number of states and countries appear inclined to adopt these types of ill-advised regulations. While certain jurisdictions might be circumvented by Linux distribution, whether through geoblocking, the inclusion of legal disclaimers or by disregarding laws beyond their operating jurisdiction, such approaches ultimately risk diminishing the free and widespread availability of Linux , so my suggestion for those in the US, and other countries, is to lobby your government representatives, federal, state, or whatever your country has, and not your linux distro.
https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-news-week-ending-march-28-2026/
As for Arch, I don't see what all the hype around Arch itself is, but I'm a GUI person so maybe that explains it. I have used Endeavour briefly in the past, and Manjaro was one of the first distros I used regularly (came loaded on a Minisforum pc I bought). Also tried Garuda recently, that one I really liked, but decided drop that after all the malware in AUR happened over the summer. I have no issues with arch-based, I just found MX some years back and really liked it. And Debian was the first distro I ever used, so was just more used to using debian based.
Back to age verification, not sure if you are on the 'hate Lunduke' team of not, but he keeps a list of where different distros stand on this and updates it as there is info to update
https://github.com/BryanLunduke/DoesItAgeVerify
Zorin and Endeavour have both said they don't plan to, but one thing that concerns me about even ones who say they won't, if they use SystemD, then it may be unavoidable as SysD devs have said they will add attestation. Can that be worked around, I dunno. But something to keep in mind.
Another good resource on these laws.
https://closednetwork.io/us-age-verification-laws-live-tracker/
