I’ve been running Fedora 35 on my framework machine for a while, and it’s been great (except for battery life, which is just alright). I’ve had to install windows alongside Fedora for some work software, which was easy enough.
However, after installing windows, my fingerprint sensor no longer plays nice with Fedora. It was not recognizing my fingerprint for login, so I removed my print. When trying to re-enroll my fingerprint, it gives me an error message that says “problem reading device.”
Anyone have ideas about what the problem might be here, and how to go about fixing it?
Fingerprint reader works out of the box with 36, but you might have to do some extra setting up via editing config files in 35. There might be documentation on reddit.
If that doesn’t work and you haven’t yet downloaded the drivers for windows, then put a fingerprint into windows via windows hello and delete it, that might clear the link via windows and the reader if there is one.
For my batch 1 unit, I have Windows 10 on the SSD, Ubuntu 22.04, on a 250GB expansion, and Fedora 36 on a USB flash drive. All have been set up to use fingerprint login, also using the same finger.
Maybe, since these are different storage options, it works for me?
I’m pretty sure it’s when you boot two OS’s from one type of storage (e.g. the internal SSD)
that you can’t link the fingerprint sensor to more than one OS.
After investigating: it seems that fingerprints are stored in a small block of memory embedded in the fingerprint sensor, and that the Windows and linux drivers don’t always store fingerprints in ways that play nicely with each other.
What exactly causes incompatibility is unclear, as the device is proprietary and documentation appears scarce. Many people with different OS configurations have differing results.
However, I was able to clear the prints using @Devyn_Cairns 's script from this thread. After re-registering, they work on Fedora. Will update if I decide to try to get fingerprint auth to work on Windows (unlikely after this experience lol).
