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.
Howdy is currently available and packaged for Debian/Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora and openSUSE. If you’re interested in packaging Howdy for your distro, don’t hesitate to open an issue.
Install the `howdy` package from the AUR. For AUR installation instructions, take a look at this [wiki page](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository#Installing_packages).
You will need to do some additional configuration steps. Please read the [ArchWiki entry](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Howdy) for more information.
The `howdy` package is available as a [Fedora COPR repository](https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/luya/howdy/), install it by simply executing the following commands in a terminal:
If nothing went wrong we should be able to run sudo by just showing your face. Open a new terminal and run `sudo -i` to see it in action. Please check [this wiki page](https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy/wiki/Common-issues) if you've experiencing problems or [search](https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy/issues) for similar issues.
If you're curious you can run `sudo howdy config` to open the central config file and see the options Howdy has to offer. On most systems this will open the nano editor, where you have to press `ctrl`+`x` to save your changes.
The easiest ways to contribute to Howdy is by starring the repository and opening GitHub issues for features you'd like to see. If you want to do more, you can also [buy me a coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/boltgolt).
Any python errors get logged directly into the console and should indicate what went wrong. If authentication still fails but no errors are printed you could take a look at the last lines in `/var/log/auth.log` to see if anything has been reported there.
This package is in no way as secure as a password and will never be. Although it's harder to fool than normal face recognition, a person who looks similar to you or well-printed photo of you could be enough to do it. Howdy is a more quick and convenient way of logging in, not a more secure one.