[fprint] Usability and modality issues with fprintd

Peter Eckersley pde-lists at eff.org
Thu Mar 21 16:10:51 PDT 2013


First of all let me say thank you for building a fingerprint authentication
stack that works on free OSes!  It's much appeciated :)

I've been using fprintd for a year or two now,  and it strikes me that
there are some ways in which its usability could be greatly improved.
Perhaps this has already been discussed, though I can't see anything in a
quick scan of the archives.  Two big things that could be better:

1. Authentication with fprintd shouldn't be modal (either password or
fingerprint).  It's really inconvenient when you want to auth by means A
and the software expects means B.  The user should be able to authenticate
by either method , as they wish, and software shouldn't demand one or the
other at any given moment.

2. Fingerprint authentication shouldn't time out.  It often takes a while,
especially for newer users, to realise that they're being prompted for a
fingerprint, and they'll often go to swipe right as the timeout is kicking
in.  If you solve 1, there isn't any reason for a timeout anyway.

I don't know if PAM creates obstacles to fixing these...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/fprint/attachments/20130321/5fd1e1b8/attachment.html>


More information about the fprint mailing list