Intro

Howdy provides Windows Hello™ style authentication for Linux. Use your built-in IR emitters and camera in combination with facial recognition to prove who you are. Using the central authentication system (PAM), this works everywhere you would otherwise need your password: Login, lock screen, sudo, su, etc.

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Debian or Ubuntu

Run the installer by pasting (ctrl+shift+V) the following commands into the terminal one at a time:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:boltgolt/howdy
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install howdy -y && sudo apt install ffmpeg -y

Fedora

Maintainer: @luyatshimbalanga

The howdy package is available as a Fedora COPR repository, install it by simply executing the following commands in a terminal:

sudo dnf copr enable principis/howdy
sudo dnf --refresh install howdy

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Installation and configuration

Search for your IR camera (IR camera is black and white only)

example commands:

ffplay /dev/video0
ffplay /dev/video1
ffplay /dev/video2
ffplay /dev/video3

Use these commands until you find the camera

sudo howdy config

Edit:

device_path = /dev/video2 #For example

Next:

sudo howdy add

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Workaround Unsupported image type error #928

Error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/howdy", line 95, in <module>
    import cli.add
  File "/usr/lib/security/howdy/cli/add.py", line 157, in <module>
    face_locations = face_detector(gsframe, 1)
RuntimeError: Unsupported image type, must be 8bit gray or RGB image.

Workaround for now:

sudo pip install --upgrade numpy==1.26.4

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