>This bill applies to all "operating system providers", ...
Not really.
>...for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
So the OS has to provide an age signal to apps from a "covered application store" defined as:
e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application.
(2) “Covered application store” does not mean an online service or platform that distributes extensions, plug-ins, add-ons, or other software applications that run exclusively within a separate host application.
It doesn't say "only if there's a covered application store present on the system". But maybe everyone in power will interpret this non-logically in exactly the right way that this doesn't become abusive.
Wouldn’t that classification apply to Linux package managers as well?
They are publicly available online services that distribute and facilitate the download of applications from third party developers to users of a general purpose computing device.
That may not be the intent, but it seems like it would still apply. Many of the “app stores” on Linux are just front ends for the package manager in some way.
I assume the people behind this don’t know things like apt or dnf exist, so it likely wasn’t considered.
There are a large number of things that the people behind this don't know about. That doesn't mean that they screwed up. It means that the law does not apply to those things.
Not really.
>...for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
So the OS has to provide an age signal to apps from a "covered application store" defined as:
e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application.
(2) “Covered application store” does not mean an online service or platform that distributes extensions, plug-ins, add-ons, or other software applications that run exclusively within a separate host application.
So things like Windows, Android and iOS...