So I’m shopping for a fingerprint reader to use on Linux desktop and found this list of fprint supported devices. The problem is that USB ID is not exactly the kind of information they advertise in marketplaces or product information pages, so I can never know whether the product I’m looking at is going to be detected at all.
I looked for reviews on Amazon of many candidates, but almost every review that mentions Linux support is a negative, so I feel that my odds here are not great.
Have you tried any device that worked with any distro, preferably out of the box?
Although I love modular solutions, I think biometrics are one of the few things that really need to be bundled with your device and locked down. At least if you care about security. If not, then don’t use a password in the first place.
To somewhat answer your question, though, you should consider solutions that allow you to unlock one trusted device with another trusted device. The most common example would be unlocking your desktop with your phone over bluetooth, especially if that phone comes with its own biometric sensor. Just make sure that secondary device is encrypted.
By that logic an mfa device like a Yubikey would also need to be fully integrated to a device to be secure. I don’t think security and modularity go opposite ways.
In my experience fprint is a bit hit and miss. As an alternative, you can get a webcam with an IR cam (Windows Hello) and use it with Howdy.
Are you looking for a desktop? HP and thinkpads have always worked out of the box for me.
Can you please provide more info about your setup? I have an Ubuntu thinkpad and I have failed so far to use the fingerprint scanner
Vanilla ubuntu? It just worked out of the box, if you go to users in gnome, there should be fingerprint login options. If it’s not being detcted on a thinkpad, I would make sure it isn’t turned off in bios.
any distro? no, fprint isn’t on all distro, so you might have to install that anyway.
I’m not sure what you are trying to get, is it
- a sensor for a DIY project?
- and external fingerprint reader?
- a laptop with a compatible sensor? (probably not that on since you asked about desktop specifically…)
not a device that “works on any distro”, but “any distro that it worked on” - I’m just making it distro-agnostic. And it’s a ready-to-use standalone USB fingerprint reader (as implied by Linux Desktop), not part of a DIY project.
Found this thread: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/778529/usb-fingerprint-readers-for-linuxanybody-use-one-what-would-you-recommend/
that points to this video about some sort of bio-key: https://youtu.be/0XA521kyNco
or this guy that had that other finger print reader: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linuxquestions-org-member-success-stories-23/usb-fingerprint-reader-linux-4175674445/
