Are there any Linux distros that are good with both touchscreen and fingerprint scanners? I have a laptop that needs a bigger hard drive, so might as well get a new OS, and its touchscreen with a fingerprint scanner. I use it to look stuff up when I’m using another computer, and to download stuff. That’s about it now that I have a “real gaming computer”.
I use Ubuntu on my other computers, and I like it well enough. I’ve tried mint cinnamon and did not particularly like it. I’m sure ubuntu would be fine to use again, but I’d like to try something else.
Sounds more like a Desktop environment question than a distro one to me.
Regarding the fingerprint scanner, as long as it’s supported by the kernel it’ll work - at least via the CLI. To have it easily usable for login and whatnot, I’d prefer a proper integration of touchscreen login into the DE, which by now at least Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon support.
For the usability with touch, for what I know at least: Gnome and KDE should be pretty usable. Cinnamon does not do so well (at least the last time I checked; e.g. scrolling the start menu by touch does not work as expected) For other DEs I don’t know, they all should recognize the touch, albeit only treat it as if it were a mouse click. The only DE that ships a proper “touch mode” that I know of is KDE, but Gnome (due to its design nature) holds up pretty well using touch also.
A distro that unites that all well and provides a solid allround package with little manual configuration needed has been Fedora in my experience, however I’m very confident that more or less all other distros (Debian, Arch, Suse,…) are shipped or can be customized to make it properly usable for your use case
I have no personal experience with fingerprint scanners on Linux, from what I have heard it depends on your laptop with Thinkpads having usually the best support. Regarding the touchscreen, I use Fedora Silverblue on a Surface Go and Project Bluefin on a Thinkpad T480s. Touch works well on both.
Cool.
Are there any Linux distros that are good with both touchscreen and fingerprint scanners? I have a laptop that needs a bigger hard drive, so might as well get a new OS, and its touchscreen with a fingerprint scanner. I use it to look stuff up when I’m using another computer, and to download stuff. That’s about it now that I have a “real gaming computer”.
I use Ubuntu on my other computers, and I like it well enough. I’ve tried mint cinnamon and did not particularly like it. I’m sure ubuntu would be fine to use again, but I’d like to try something else.
Sounds more like a Desktop environment question than a distro one to me.
Regarding the fingerprint scanner, as long as it’s supported by the kernel it’ll work - at least via the CLI. To have it easily usable for login and whatnot, I’d prefer a proper integration of touchscreen login into the DE, which by now at least Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon support.
For the usability with touch, for what I know at least: Gnome and KDE should be pretty usable. Cinnamon does not do so well (at least the last time I checked; e.g. scrolling the start menu by touch does not work as expected) For other DEs I don’t know, they all should recognize the touch, albeit only treat it as if it were a mouse click. The only DE that ships a proper “touch mode” that I know of is KDE, but Gnome (due to its design nature) holds up pretty well using touch also.
A distro that unites that all well and provides a solid allround package with little manual configuration needed has been Fedora in my experience, however I’m very confident that more or less all other distros (Debian, Arch, Suse,…) are shipped or can be customized to make it properly usable for your use case
Fedora worked well with both before IBM took over. can’t speak to how it is today.
Debian isn’t bad on touchscreens but fingerprint reader support has been shit.
Mint was good on touchscreens as well, but fingerprint reader worked 50% of the time l though that could have been my ancient hardware.
CachyOS is en vogue. I’ve been using it forever, and it’s awesome.
KDE, and I think GNOME, have good support for touchscreens. You can pick either at the start.
For fingerprint readers, looks like you want this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fingerprint_GUI
I am also interested in this answer.
I have no personal experience with fingerprint scanners on Linux, from what I have heard it depends on your laptop with Thinkpads having usually the best support. Regarding the touchscreen, I use Fedora Silverblue on a Surface Go and Project Bluefin on a Thinkpad T480s. Touch works well on both.