Hello
I was just at a friend's place. He uses a USB fingerprint reader to log onto his windows machine (a desktop). He doesn't have to enter username/password, neither does his girlfriend, it just does it all automatically based on the fingerprints. I use Debian Sid on both my machines (A desktop and a laptop), as well as an old IDE hard drive with Windows on the desktop.

My questions are:
Are there any cheap, simple and Linux-compatible fingerprint readers?
And can I use it with KDM?

I've got almost no knowledge about this stuff whatsoever, so if I missed something, or made some seemingly obvious mistake, sorry. :P

I was reading a Linux magazine recently (can't remember which one, and I subscribe to four), and it was talking about Linux on laptops. I cannot remember which distribution they said the were using, but one of the Lenovo ThinkPad models they tested had a fingerprint scanner built in, and it worked fine (out of the box, too).

My thinking is that if it will work on a laptop, it will work on a desktop.

Yep, but then I'd probably have to reconfigure something on my computer, possibly recompile the kernel with a module etc, but that wouldn't be an issue. Basically, then, the main question is which one to get... any recommendations?

EDIT: I just remembered, I hope it integrates well with KDE and KDM, both when it comes to logging in, as well as when the screensaver locks the screen, and such.. It'd save me a lot of hassle.

Anyone? My friend says his scanner is called Medion Biometric Scanner.

Check my web page on the T61, the link is in my signature.

jlinkels

So I should use fprint, thanks. =)

But I still don't know which reader to buy...