👋 Hey guys, I'm Dhilip
After 3 years of my Linux journey, I finally achieved something I thought was impossible.
I bought an HP laptop with a fingerprint reader. The same day I got it, I installed Ubuntu 😄
I never even tried the fingerprint sensor in Windows.
But sadly… Linux didn't support it.
For 2+ years, I used my laptop without fingerprint login.
As a FOSS activist, I kept trying — but nothing worked.
🔥 Breakthrough Moment
Two weeks ago, I found this blog:
Fingerprint Authentication Guide — Johannes Kinzig
Even without hope, I read everything.
Then I discovered:
04f3:0c00 ELAN Fingerprint (Unsupported)
But then… I saw a pull request adding support for many devices — including mine 👀
Ubuntu hadn’t merged it yet — so I built the driver myself 💪
💻 Fingerprint Authentication on Ubuntu 24.04
Many HP laptops use ELAN fingerprint sensors, which are not supported by default in Ubuntu 24.04.
So we need to build a patched version of libfprint.
📚 Resources
⚙️ Installation Steps
Install Dependencies
bash sudo apt-get install meson glib-2.0 libgusb-dev \ libgirepository1.0-dev libcairo-dev libpixman-1-dev \ cmake libnss3-dev libgudev-1.0-dev gtk-doc-tools \ gdb valgrind git openssl libssl-devClone Repository
bash git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/depau/libfprint.git cd libfprintSwitch Branch
bash git switch elanmoc2 git fetch && git pullBuild & Install
bash meson setup builddir && cd builddir meson compile meson test sudo meson installFix Library Path
bash echo '/usr/local/lib/' | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local.conf sudo ldconfigRestart Service
bash sudo systemctl restart fprintd.serviceEnroll Fingerprint
bash fprintd-enroll $USER
Enable for sudo
bash sudo pam-auth-update
🎉 Final Result
Now you can use your fingerprint for:
- ✅ Login
- ✅ Sudo authentication
- ✅ System unlock
💭 Final Thoughts
I hope this helps someone out there.
After 3 years… it finally worked.
Linux is the best ❤️