9300 Fingerprint Reader Update?

Thanks for asking this. I messaged Dell and they haven't been helpful. I figured because I bought a laptop that was advertised to have a fingerprint reader that it would work. So is the situation that it's not officially supported and functioning?

How can they legally and ethically advertise a fingerprint reader if it doesn't actually work?

They said it would be supported after the machine's release in the year 2020.

We're closing in the first 6 monthes. They still have 7 monthes left.

Actually, they have always said we would get the driver in "mid 2020"... I think that's today!    So, hopefully it will be released soon! 

If someone from Dell could answer us about this

That would be fantastic...  is there somebody we can PM?

Not that I know of. I have seen some Dell people, members of the Sputnik project, sometimes answer. But if Dell has something to say I gues they would have done, already. If they don't have something ready nor a date, they cant tell us anything. Because if they do and miss that target date...

While it is nice to have a fingerprint reader, my stance is clear : those devices induce a false sense of security. They are very easy to defeat and if your machine is unlocked with one, I consider leaving the machine unattended dangerous.

But I am like Edward Snowden : where I go my laptop goes. Even if it's just to go take a piss in the next room.

Working with sensitive material made me paranoid. The "good' paranoid part I hope.

Dell customer service is a joke.

Everyone, everwhere I see says that.

I don't know.

What I do know is I am seriously wondering how Dell people test machines before sending them to the store.

My XPS, 2020 with Ubuntu had random crashes of Xorg. Powering the laptop would get after typing the password for minutes, and after a few tries I found out Wayland was dying. I am now using Xorg and it kept dying every 10/15 minutes, sometimes working an hour before suddenly crashing, making me get ejected of the current session and every single program opened on every single desktop dead and gone.

Had to open a ticket at Ubuntu, see that other people are having the problem. We've been given a work-around to avoid seeing Xorg crash all the time, and I to go change configuration in both Goland and IntelliJ to they dont make Xorg crash either.

I still dont know if it's the i915 driver crashing or something else. But every 5 to 10 minutes I have the i915 spitting out crap on my kern.log with dumps of something going wrong.

I have USB keys that work anywhere but plugged on the laptop they keep connecting and disconnecting in loop every 5/6 seconds.

It took me only 15 minutes of using the laptop, to see it crash, Xorg die, Xorg die randomly. Clearly, no one at Dell did check their laptops do work properly on Ubuntu. The first 2, almost 3 weeks, I had a brand new > 2000 Euro laptop that I could not use at all.

I got a friend who bought the same laptop with Windows 10, he has it at work. Never had any problem with it at all. The Ubuntu certification is worth not much, and seems no one at Dell just tried to power up the laptop, login (takes several tries before you can as Wayland keeps having the login crash even if you use Xorg as selected, Wayland will hand then make the login crash).

Open a xterm, less any file and keep down arrow pressed : it hangs. Xorg dies, you're sent back at the login screen. Hope you didnt had anything not saved anywhere or trying to do any work.

I am seriously considering buying a Windows 10 licence, install it, resell this piece of crap

And go buy some ARM-based Macbook. This is very probably what I will do as soon they are available.

My laptop was barely working. Took 3 weeks to get it not die all the time on me now.

And every update I am wondering if I am going to get back to a machine that has its desktop die and random, make my lose all my work, and send me back at the login screen.

Thank you!  I got it working (although, I think there's a lot of room for improvement - it seems to only let you register one finger and it seems to only work for logging into Ubuntu, but nowhere else).  I'm going to be looking into getting better results, but that's for another thread.

I really appreciate you posting the link Alpha!