Fingerprint login support is coming to Linux Mint.
The upcoming Linux Mint 22.2 release includes a brand new desktop app called Fingwit. It let users with a fingerprint reader supported by the Linux kernel to add and configure fingerprints (dubbed ‘enrolling’) to authenticate key tasks, including biometric login:
- Login to Linux Mint using a fingerprint
- Unlock the screen with a fingerprint
- Authenticate
sudocommands with a fingerprint - Run admin apps via
pkexecusing a fingerprint
Any fingerprint reader that works on Ubuntu will work on Linux Mint, as both distributions share the same hardware support.
Though Fingwit uses fprintd (the same fingerprint daemon Ubuntu uses), it is paired with what Linux Mint says is a ‘smarter’ Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) to “detect problematic cases and dynamically switch between fingerprint and password authentication”.
Providing an example of how that module will matter in practice, Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint project lead explains (sic):
If you’re trying to log in but your home directory is encrypted, fingerprint authentication would log you in but your session would crash since ecryptfs requires your password. Fingwit detects that kind of things so you get fingerprint authentication as much as possible, but avoid such issues
Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint
This attentive touch—sorry/not sorry—in how fingerprint support in Linux Mint works is part of the reason this Linux distro remains so uniquely popular: it opts for a considered approach to making changes, however big or small they are.
And like many of Linux Mint’s other homegrown apps, Fingwit is an X-App. This means it’s designed to work across different desktop environments and Linux distributions, not only the Cinnamon desktop and Linux Mint.
Linux Mint has put Fingwit source code on GitHub (for those who fancy an early peek), and it will ship among the many new features in Linux Mint 22.2 when released this summer (either late July or early August).