The below instructions are primarily geared at installing the core software on Debian/Ubuntu/Trisquel and derived distributions at the moment and verifying card reader support. Depending on your particular use case additional software may be required and other distributions may require a different set of packages/software and/or additional steps for security reasons. For instance you may need to add yourself to a particular user group. Our documentation is also geared at the smart card readers in our catalog explicitly. We have not yet added documentation for Fedora, CentOS, Redhat Enterprise Linux, Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, and distributions derived thereof, so please reach out to us about these distributions or whichever distribution you are using so we can expedite the addition of additional documentation relative to customer demand. For Debian/Ubuntu derived distributions continue reading.
Steps to testing the smart card reader with Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other derived distributions:
0. Purchase a compatible start card reader for GNU/Linux
1. Open a terminal and install the utilities
sudo apt install opensc libacsccid1 pcsc-tools libccid
2. Insert USB smart card reader
3. Run pcsc_scan to verify the card reader is working
sudo pcsc_scan
4. Insert a smart card, you can test the functioning of the card reader with a chipped credit card