Support for Linux Operating System
The Fx2000, Fx3000 and HiScan fingerprint scanners are usable as
well from Linux world!
It is enough that you have installed a
distribution with kernel version greater than or equal to 2.4 .
The distributions officially supported, with precompiled drivers and RPM packages to be readily installed, are:
- Fedora Core 2,
- Fedora Core 3,
- Fedora Core 4,
- Fedora Core 5,
- Fedora Core 6,
- RedHat 9.0,
- Mandrake 10.0,
- Suse 10,
- Mandriva 2006.
If your distribution is not included among those listed above, it is sufficient to have the gcc compiler greater than or equal to the 2.96 version and you will be able to compile the USB driver which is provided in source code.
Besides the driver you will be provided with the control panel of the scanner, similar to the one to be installed under Windows, from which one can execute the basic functions of initialization, configuration and test by using a comfortable graphical interface. In order to enjoy this interface you should have installed an updated version of GTK+ (the 2.2 version, at least) and you have to install the utility from one of the RPM packages provided with the 9 supported distributions.
FX3 SDK
FX3, the powerful Software Development Kit is available
under Linux both in a light version and a complete version! A set of
libraries written in standard C and available in the very common ELF
format allows to interact with the Fx2000 and Fx3000 scanners.
Some
examples are provided in C source code together with the SDK: from the
simple application to be used in console to the enrolment and
identification demo with graphical interface.
As it happens for Windows version, two dialogs frequently used are included in the SDK: the fingerprint acquisition dialog (Acquisition Graphical Interface) and the dialog for creating a model containing up to three templates (Enrolment Graphical Interface).
Platform portability
FX3 SDK is developed in ANSI C and it allows Biometrika to easily create an SDK version for platforms different from Intel/AMD. The most important example lies in the porting for Amida, a palmtop provided with USB interface to which it is possible to connect the fingerprint scanner. This allows developers for AMIDA to write fingerprint acquisition and users’ recognition programs. Thank to a special optimized version for the palmtops processor the matching time between two fingerprints is just one second.
Fx3000 PasswordBank
The functionalities available with Fx3000 for the PasswordBank management are usable as well under Linux.