California governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill No. 1043 into law in October 2023, mandating that all operating system providers implement age verification at account setup by January 1, 2027. The bill requires OS providers to collect a user's birth date or age bracket and transmit a segmented signal to applications via a real-time API. While Windows already incorporates similar age checks, the requirement impacts all OS providers operating in California, including Linux distributions. Linux communities express significant concern, with users on r/linuxmint stating the law is 'basically impossible to enforce' and suggesting platforms might simply add disclaimers instead of implementing complex verification systems.