No Module named 'dlib' with Howdy

Question

I'm using Ubuntu 24.04, I've been trying to enable and configure Face ID using Howdy on my laptop but keep getting this error.

No module names 'dlib'
Can't import the dlib module, check the output of pip3 show dlib.

Answer 1

Install dlib using pip. Open the terminal and type:

sudo apt update  
sudo apt install python3-dev python3-pip python3-setuptools cmake libboost-all-dev libopenblas-dev libatlas-base-dev libx11-dev    
pip3 install dlib
python3 -c "import dlib; print(dlib.__version__)" # verify the dlib installation 
sudo howdy add  # enroll a new face in Howdy's facial recognition system

Maybe sudo howdy add is unable to access dlib because dlib is installed in a virtual environment and dlib is trying to access something in your filesystem that it can't access from inside the virtual environment where you installed it.

You also need to be careful when using Kali Linux Tools in Ubuntu. I recommend reading the answers to How to stop Katoolin from crashing Ubuntu?.