KDE Plasma 5.24 Introduces Fingerprint Reader Support
The next release of the KDE Plasma desktop environment will include support for fingerprint readers for session authentication and more.
KDE Developer, Nate Graham, announced last week that KDE Plasma would be receiving fingerprint reader support in the upcoming 5.24 release. The added support has been a work in progress for some time, but Devin Lin (the primary developer on the feature) finally merged it into 5.24.
As of now, the fingerprint reader support will allow you to enroll and unenroll fingerprints. Any enrolled fingerprint can then be used to unlock the screen, provide authentication for an app, and authenticate for sudo usage.
The developers have created a user-friendly GUI for onboarding fingerprints, which can be found in System Settings, but will (obviously) require either a built-in or external fingerprint reader to use. The one caveat is finding an external fingerprint reader that is fully supported by Linux. Most all laptop fingerprint readers should, however, work as expected.
On top of fingerprint reader support, KDE 5.24 will also include Wayland support for DRM leasing (on VR headsets), as well as support for the NVIDIA driver’s GBM backend, new screenshot features in Spectacle, a default blurred background effect for the Overview, and plenty of bug fixes and performance improvements.
The 5.24 release is scheduled for release in February 2022.
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