Making Bluetooth Work on Lenovo X1 Carbon 6th Gen with Linux

I expect Bluetooth to work out of the box on a Lenovo laptop in 2018, while I don't expect Linux to work well at all. I've been using linux since 1996, and things haven't changed : unless hardware makers start supporting it natively, we'll always have problems.

Now, I may be very wrong on the windows side of things : I expect it to work, but maybe it doesn't!

The big difference is that the chance that ALL devices on a brand new laptop will work out of the box (including all the bells and whistles like sleep modes, audio routing when adding/removing Bluetooth gear, multiple external displays with different DPIs, etc) is nearly 100% on Windows and in my experience nearly 0% on even the most up to date linux distros, at least unless you did very careful research before buying your machine.

This isn’t a criticism of linux desktop distros vs windows but it’s pointing out that the most important things you need when making a desktop OS for general purpose hardware is a big market share and relations with hw vendors. It’s a chicken and egg problem for linux.

Also: people generally aren’t interested in understanding or properly solving some problem. If a reinstall solves their problem that’s in many cases easier for most than editing a config file! Windows Systems are (can and often should be) ephemeral. I wish windows would make the nightly-wipe I have seen in university classroom installs of windows the default for home editions.

Even worse, I asked about their business line of laptops that officially support Ubuntu, but they come installed with 16.04 and that is what is supported (as at November this year anyway).

" The company computer was broken, and no one could fix it. They call the old repairman, who takes a look, and says he can fix it for $5K. Desperate, the company says "Anything, just fix it!". The repairman squats down at the main console, opens the hatch, and replaces 1 single bolt holding some boards together. As he closes the hatch, he hears the cheers as the computer starts up, from all but the manager, who says "What? $5K for that?". The repairman silently hands him the bill:

1 Bolt $1 Knowing where to put the bolt: $4,9999 "

In a similar vein, knowing which option in which config to change in which way is really the hard part, and changing the wrong one in the wrong way will make it worse. And in every problem I run into, each source, somehow, has a different recommendation, often without explanation as to what the change will do or why. So I see the original author's point, and had an excuse to trot out this old, shopworn joke.

It's more than Windows (sometimes) but not outrageous.