[Fingerprint auth improvements] Turn fingerprint authentication off when laptop lid is closed; allow multiple fingerprint authentication attempts

[sailingisfun]

Suggestion to improve user-friendlines of fingerprint authentication.

Current behaviour

1. When fingerprint authentication is enabled on a laptop, a fingerprint authentication prompt is always shown even when the lid is closed and obscures the fingerprint reader. A user has to wait for the timeout duration to switch to password entry.
2. If fingerprint authentication fails, the user has to enter the password immediately. No re-try of fingerprint authentication is offered.

Suggestions

1. In Fingwit, add an option to turn off fingerprint authentication automatically when the laptop lid is closed (default: on).
2. In Fingwit, add an option to allow multiple fingerprint authentication tries with a delay of e.g. 500ms or 1s in between them. Setting max-tries in /etc/pam.d/common-auth to greater 1 partially achieves this. However, there is virtually no delay between tries which makes it hard to re-position the finger in between authentication attempts.

[MasterKeyxda]

I would really like to see this improvement in linux mint. I'd go a step further and recommend that the fingerprint enrollment tool should have the configuration number of retries and delay between retries.

A user friendly Linux mint will increase its market share in the long run.

[Faravidj]

I too second this. Usability of fingerprint auth is currently very bad, it's very common for fingerprint auth to fail so there needs to be by default 3 tries before prompting for password. Currently using fingerprint reader is very frustrating for default Mint install. Tested the feature with Thinkpad L460 which has old style swipe reader.