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View Full Version : Anyone know what the story is with fingerprint scanning and 9.04?


diablo75
April 13th, 2009, 09:29 AM
I recently ordered a laptop off ebay that has a fingerprint scanner. So naturally I wanted to find out if I'd be able to use this nifty feature in Ubuntu, and someone I got a response from was under the impression that it would be in Jaunty because it's a part of GNOME 2.26. But those who are using the Beta of Jaunty say it's not working out of the box for some reason.

So I was just curious if anyone knows the latest on development for getting this feature to work out of the box on Ubuntu? I'm under the impression that there is a good chunk of development yet to be done (it would be worth the wait to see a, "Looks like you have a fingerprint sensor! Would you like to set it up now?" prompt appear during upgrade/install).
perce
April 13th, 2009, 09:48 AM
Try looking at the System 76 forums: they have models with fingerprint scanner and are working on it.
23meg
April 13th, 2009, 10:11 AM
I recently ordered a laptop off ebay that has a fingerprint scanner. So naturally I wanted to find out if I'd be able to use this nifty feature in Ubuntu, and someone I got a response from was under the impression that it would be in Jaunty because it's a part of GNOME 2.26. But those who are using the Beta of Jaunty say it's not working out of the box for some reason.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/346083


(it would be worth the wait to see a, "Looks like you have a fingerprint sensor! Would you like to set it up now?" prompt appear during upgrade/install).

You'll never see such a prompt during an Ubuntu upgrade/install (hopefully). Your hardware will be autoconfigured and "just work" as long as it's supported. It would be a nightmare to have to endure such prompts for each piece of hardware during installation.
diablo75
April 16th, 2009, 11:00 PM
I found a bug report about this going on here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/346083

It looks like they're waiting on another package to be updated, "libusb". Anyone know when that might happen?
CJ Master
April 16th, 2009, 11:26 PM
You'll never see such a prompt during an Ubuntu upgrade/install (hopefully). Your hardware will be autoconfigured and "just work" as long as it's supported. It would be a nightmare to have to endure such prompts for each piece of hardware during installation.

Though obviously, it has to be configured as too which fingerprints to accept...
23meg
April 29th, 2009, 12:35 AM
Though obviously, it has to be configured as too which fingerprints to accept...

The process of installing or upgrading an operating system is a scary, stressful one for most people, even technically adept users. A successful installer / upgrader design will ask as few questions as possible during it, and make sure each step that it's posing to the user is relevant. Asking for the user's fingerprint of all things is pretty out of place during such a process.


I found a bug report about this going on here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/346083

It looks like they're waiting on another package to be updated, "libusb". Anyone know when that might happen?

You may want to ask people involved with the upstream project directly, since it seems the code you want hasn't gone into an upstream release yet.