Within the newest month-to-month information roundup from the Linux Mint crew, the builders introduced a function that customers have needed for a lengthy, very long time. The famously user-friendly distribution is lastly getting correct, built-in assist for fingerprint login. For a distro that has constructed its repute on offering a cushty, “it simply works” expertise for folks new to Linux, the absence of this handy safety function has been a noticeable hole, particularly on trendy laptops.

The brand new function will arrive in Linux Mint 22.2, powered by Fingwit, a model new XApp constructed by the Mint builders. It handles detecting your fingerprint reader and recording your prints. As soon as configured, you need to use your fingerprint for the login display, the screensaver, authenticating sudo instructions, and every other administrative actions that pop up a password dialog (pkexec).

What makes this significantly fascinating is the way it offers with conditions the place a fingerprint simply won’t work. Fingwit makes use of fprintd for the backend work, however the Mint devs say its customized authentication module is intelligent sufficient to detect tough instances. As an example, if your own home listing is encrypted, you completely want your password to decrypt it at login. Simply utilizing a fingerprint would result in a crashed session. Fingwit sees this coming and dynamically prompts to your password as an alternative. The Mint crew says Fingwit will be capable of run “in any desktop surroundings and on any Linux distribution.”

A big driver for this growth has been the crew’s ongoing work with Framework. Testing the corporate’s {hardware} has pushed the Mint crew to raised assist the options packed into trendy laptops. This partnership can be the explanation Mint 22.1 acquired energy profiles and why Mint 22.2 will ship with a more moderen HWE ({hardware} enablement) kernel.

The crew additionally introduced a slew of different adjustments for the upcoming launch. As a part of this work, core functions like gnome-calendar, simple-scan (the doc scanner), and baobab (the disk utilization analyzer) shall be upgraded to their newer libAdwaita variations. To unravel the long-standing frustration of libAdwaita apps ignoring system themes, the builders have patched the library. Taking it a step additional, they’ve forked it totally right into a new mission referred to as libAdapta.

On a remaining, important word, the crew additionally had a severe warning for customers of older variations. The Linux Mint 20.x collection, which incorporates variations 20, 20.1, 20.2, and 20.3, formally reached its Finish of Life in April 2024. Your system will proceed to operate, however it can not obtain any safety updates from the official repositories, leaving it weak. The crew laid out two choices. The really useful path is a recent set up of a more moderen launch (22.1), which supplies assist till 2029 and is the cleanest method ahead. Alternatively, you’ll be able to try an extended and sophisticated in-place improve, which is a multi-step course of from 20.x to 21.3.