ThinkPad Fingerprint In Ubuntu 14.04

ThinkPad Fingerprint In Ubuntu 14.04

Recently I switched to Ubuntu 14.04 trying to give Linux another chance (previously I tried Linux Mint which I find  an excellent distro for users migrating from Windows) and after finishing setting up my ThinkPad W520 I wanted to enable the fingerprint reader.

I found multiple solutions describing how to enable the fingerprint reader using, one of them was using fPrint but it wasn’t so “elegant” as Fingerprint GUI.

Installing ThinkPad Fingerprint In Ubuntu

 

To enable the ThinkPad fingerprint in Ubuntu 14.04 you will need to add the following PPA and install Fingerprint GUI: ppa:fingerprint/fingerprint

Fingerprint GUI 1.05

On the Finger tab you have to register one or more fingers, then log out and log in so the new defaults take effect.

 

Fingerprint GUI Choose Finger

Now you can unlock your screen and run commands with root privileges using your fingerprints.

Uninstalling Fingerprint GUI

If you decide to uninstall the Fingerprint GUI you must install back the standard PolicyKit daemon.

More information about Fingerprint GUI can be found on the Launchpad project page.