Please add face login in next version

Desktop
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I use Fedora 43 Gnome in Thinkpad but I need face login but without install any third-party pakage.

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Hi, GNOME doesn’t develop Fedora. You need to ask at https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/

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this is major problem with linux, users are confused about where to ask for features, bugs, etc.

there are some cases, when i report a bug to distro, they say report it upstream, when i report upstream they say its downstream patch problem.

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Face login is extremely difficult to get right. Ultimately it is somewhere on the roadmap, but before we can get there we need to do a big rework of our authentication protocol. We also need new Linux kernel features to do this somewhat securely. That’s not to mention the complexity of actually matching a face biometrically. We’d probably need to find an expert in that space and bring them in to develop this capability using modern techniques.

In other words, there’s exactly 0 chance it’s happening in the next version. It’s not a feature we can sit down and implement in an afternoon, or even a couple of dozen of afternoons. We’re talking about years of work.

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what about os level passkeys, does we have any on going work, or it is also difficult as face authentication.

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It is also quite a complicated thing to implement, also on the order of years to get done. Work is ongoing here though: Credentials for Linux ¡ GitHub

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What’s upstream and downstream in the context of something stable like gnome versus rolling?

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In the context of GNOME, the stuff you get from a distro like Ubuntu or Fedora is “downstream” and GNOME itself (the code you find on gitlab.gnome.org) is upstream. Downstreams (distros) take GNOME’s upstream code, compile it and integrate it with the rest of their system, and then ship that to the end-user to use.

This relationship makes it difficult to identify where an issue really exists. A bug might exist due to a choice a downstream has made while integrating GNOME into the rest of the system, and thus it’s a “downstream bug” that needs to be solved by the downstream. Alternatively, a bug might just exist in GNOME itself, and that’s an “upstream bug”. A lot of the time it’s not exactly super clear where the bug exists. Maybe a bug was caused by a choice made by a downstream, but the upstream project can decide to take responsibility for fixing the issue anyway. Thus the line gets super blurry unless you’re really keeping track.

For an end-user, the best approach is to report issues to your distribution. The people working on the distribution are responsible for at least triaging if the issue is their own or if it belongs upstream.

A feature like face unlock or passkeys will require collaboration between upstream and downstream. Upstream GNOME is missing functionality that we’d need for this feature to work right. On the other hand, even once the feature exists upstream, a downstream distribution would then need to take GNOME’s support for the feature and make the necessary effort to adjust their integrations between GNOME and the rest of the system.

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Thanks for the good explanation!

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@Lemma got a point about the upstream/downstream mess is exactly why casual users bail on Linux. It’s a classic Linux headache where nobody wants to take ownership of a bug. But honestly, @adrianvovk response is the reality check we needed. Everyone’s asking for Windows Hello-style features without realizing the sheer amount of plumbing needed in the kernel and PAM just to make it secure. It’s not just a ‘feature’, it’s a massive architectural shift. I’d rather they take years to get it right than ship some insecure gimmick that breaks on every update.