cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100
Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
Bluetooth.
Its always been an issue and it remains an issue.
I had issues with Bluetooth on Windows. Been having none since I switched to Debian + KDE.
I had a ton of issues on Arch/Artix, but Debian + KDE works as expected OOTB in terms of functionality and UI.
It depends HEAVILY on your chipset. I have a costco HP i bought as a backup that works seamlessly. Literally seamless at all times. Its a commodity piece of hardware. Millions of these things made.
My bleeding edge, new machine, cuts out, audio stutters, sleep issues; you name it: looking at you mediatek.
If you’re technical, you might be able to change out the chipset as WiFi+Bluetooth is usually on an M.2 2230 E-key board on most machines. But agreed that it is very annoying and this isn’t feasible for most regular users
TL;DR: I’d recommend getting a bluetooth dongle!
I’ve got an Asus bluetooth 4.0 dongle, and it works perfectly for bluetooth. PS5 controllers, Airpods Pros, they’ve all connected to it really nicely.
I used to have issues on Windows with bluetooth, but then I found out why. My Windows was using my motherboard BT instead of the dongle. I added a PS5 controller while that was in effect, and once I eventually got the bluetooth dongle (poor BT module in the motherboard sucked ass), I noticed I couldn’t remove the controller from the settings menu or through the old control panel way.
I had to turn on the BT module on my motherboard again, boot into Windows, remove the BT entries, then turn it back off. I’ve never had an issue in either Windows or Linux after that.
Ditto to this, I was having huge problems with the rpi4/5 modules, when I bought a dongle everything worked instantly.
yeah, I have one of those bluetooth earbud pairs that can pair individually, and they connect just fine but only via a low quality audio sink mode, so it sounds like shit. Works perfectly well with my android phone, so it’s definitely some linux bullshit.
Yeah BT audio quality is not reliably good on devices that work smoothly on OS X.
I know there can be good setups, but it needs to consistently work in shared spaces, which is where i mostly use BT speakers.
I bought a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle decades ago and while the interface has changed in Mint over the years, I’ve always been able to use it to communicate with my ancient flip-phone to get pictures off it. In fact I was able to use it with some very rough and ready software to pull the texts off it at one point.
It probably also worked on Windows, because I’ve had both since before I switched.
The phone’s camera got water damaged a while back and now all the pictures from it - not that I take many - have a literal watermark on them, but the Bluetooth still works both ways.
Can’t vouch for whether it would work with more heavy duty hardware like a headset or speakers, but I guess it must be luck of the draw with a lot of these things.