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What model? I was shipped an Oryx Pro for work and it's given me exactly zero problems in 11 months. I've got a wireless USB mouse, wireless USB keyboard, USB smart card reader plugged in through a hub, and an external monitor connected via HDMI in extend the screen mode. Even with an NVIDIA discrete GPU, every single thing has worked plug and play on the first try. I use a bluetooth headset for all meetings and it also works perfectly fine, paired in exactly the same way as it does on any other platform. The Linux bluez stack definitely supports headphones.

Ironically, the only gotcha moment I have ever had was when plugging my iPhone in to charge it, I kept noticing my network connection would get wonky, and I eventually realized Apple puts code injection into its USB cables that include a setting to automatically tether a device an iPhone get plugged into to use Ethernet over USB, so I was being disconnected from my WiFi access point and then being tethered through the iPhone back to the same WiFi access point, except mediated through the iPhone as a relay. Yet another user-hostile, annoying on by default Apple setting I had to discover by accident and then turn off.

It's a Linux + bluetooth problem, not a computer vendor problem. Bluetooth microphones are basically impossible to get working on Linux. That's what I was told by vendor support as well, just get a wired mic as bluetooth headphones+mic are unreliable.

I was attempting to use Sony XM3s.

Glad to hear you have some headphones that work, what model?

> Linux doesn't support bluetooth headphones for example.

This is not generally correct. I've been using bluetooth headphones with my Linux desktop computer at work all day, and probably over a decade in total. Closer to two.

I don't doubt your negative experience or that it's an interesting data point, but let's not stick to factually incorrect things, either.

While this is not correct, and I do use my BT headphone with Ubuntu 20.04, it's is almost true for any casual user.

Indeed, the number of glitches and irritating workaround I have to use to make something else than a mouse work with BT is something most people don't want to put up with their $1000 laptop.

Yes, BT is a shitty tech. But their phone works out of the box. Their Mac OS and Windows as well.

The fact we still get BT not pairing randomly (or wifi stop working, or sleep mode never awaking) is a huge problem in 2021.

We should not ignore that as a community.

That's why I report bugs, give money and help people online.

But it will not be enough if we close our eyes on the work yet to be done.

> But it will not be enough if we close our eyes on the work yet to be done.

I very much agree with your sentiment, but I simply don't have any issues with BT headphones on Linux desktops specifically I could work on today.

Bluetooth is a very a complex set of standards - I work as a system architect for a well-known celestial car brand, and implementing Bluetooth and BLE is the bane of our existence; truly disastrous technology - and I'm sure things to improve are aplenty, though. In terms of desktop biz logic, the roll-out and maturation of the PipeWire stack is one ongoing effort to watch for.

Yes, and then you have Wifi, touchpads, graphic cards, web cams... It's amazing that we even have a working OS honestly.

Thanks for saying this, it gets to the root of the problem being Bluetooth.

What should we support instead? Is there another wireless standard?

I've noticed there are models that use some kind of non-Bluetooth USB dongle for example.

Thank you for saying this. As someone new to Linux, it's easy to be intimidated by Linux users saying "but it works for me!".

Where do you give money? I've looked into a few projects but it's pretty fragmented. Donating money to Ubuntu was a trip...required digging through forums and finally "Downloading" Ubuntu to trigger the "donate money" pop up.

Linux needs more options for people like me to pay for polish.

I have a list of FOSS projects I rotate and donate to regularly, including Ubuntu and the FSF. So many projects need help, VLC, libreoffice, firefox, python, ublock origin...

It's not just about the money, it's also a way for devs to feel that their work matters.

For an end user who isn't a Linux enthusiast, generally working headphones aren't sufficient. They have to almost never not work.

I record music on Linux, and one of the reasons that I never recommend it is that I can imagine people dropping real money on a sufficiently powerful laptop and finding things don't work without a lot of configuration, or perhaps not at all. That doesn't cut it for the average user.

Thank you for saying this. Yes, it doesn't cut it for the average user.

Have you thought about donating to open source projects to support them along?

Linux is the only viable option. It must improve.

Yes I've donated to some :)

That’s the problem though isn’t it? Imagine if some people just weren’t able to get their mouse or airpods working with their laptop. Of course, airpods work for everyone’s iphone, and I’ve never had a bluetooth mouse that didn’t work with Windows.

Until Linux works out of the box for everyone it’s not going to see mainstream adoption.

I’ve had similar experiences across multiple different Bluetooth chipsets in several different motherboards.

I’ve never been able to get AirPods to work and it took several hours and some custom code to get my Bose headphones to work. It’s not what I would consider to be even close to similar to macOS/Windows

^ this. Custom code to get headphones to work is exactly the type of thing that is only viable for developers. Linux needs to move beyond this "for mechanics only" mindset for it to succeed.

Same, could not get Airpods to connect AT ALL. They would show up, "connect" for a second then disconnect.

I've done nothing special to use Bluetooth headphones with my Linux computers (a Dell laptop, a Lenovo workstation and a Lenovo laptop, running either Fedora or Ubuntu) and I use a variety of them regularly:

- Samsung Galaxy Buds Live that came with my last smartphone

- Some fancy Jabra-brand headset we get from work

- My wife's Sennheiser Momentum Wireless when I don't bring my own

- Not headphones per-se, but in the office meeting rooms we have Logitech desk mics I connect to all the time

No config or installing additional software needed beyond pairing.

Based on my own samples the above makes me suspect "AirPods don't comply well with standards" or something along those lines.

Does your mic work in the headphones?

These were Sony XM3 in particular. After installing a bunch of software through the CLI I got them to play sound.

But the mic never worked. I saw similar stories online of everyone just saying "stick with wired mics".

Yep, mic works for me. My main mic is actually wired, too (a RODE NT-USB), but just for audio quality reasons. I use the Galaxy Buds Live for meetings when I'm in the living room because my wife needs our office room for something, and I use the Logitech desk mics in the office, and those work. I can't remember about the Jabra off-hand.

Thanks I'll check those Galaxy Buds out.

I have Airpods as well as Jabra Elite 65t, Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, and various Plantronics. The Apple are the only ones that are wonky. There seems to be some other protocol for them that needs to be enabled, but I didn't bother and just switched to the Galaxy Buds Pro (the Jabras are excellent as well.)

The very first DDG result for "airpods linux bluetooth" is this one: https://askubuntu.com/questions/922860/pairing-apple-airpods...

Does the mic work in any of these? I found it to be impossible

Re: airpods linux bluetooth -- CLI commands to get bluetooth headphones just to play sound is not viable for Linux to take off.

You have to change the profile from "headphones" (high quality audio) to "headset" to have a microphone. It's a matter of a few clicks.

I'm just pointing out that Apple was doing something different. As far as that being not viable for Linux to take off... well, I respect your opinion.

The instructions you linked state that to connect Airpods one needs to:

Set ControllerMode = bredr or ControllerMode = dual by editing /etc/bluetooth/main.conf file using sudo nano /etc/bluetooth/main.conf command (or another text editor of your choice)

sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

Try to pair again.

Blame manufacturers.

Of course it's not as good as MacOS + Apple headphones but I think more recent Linux distros that use PipeWire as the audio backend are ahead of Windows. On Windows, A2DP support is so limited that headsets like the Sony XM4s suffer from worse latency and sound quality, particularly terrible mic quality, while on Kubuntu everything works out of the box with the same quality you get when paired with a phone. There's still the issue of unstable drivers that break out of nowhere and require rebooting for Bluetooth to work again, but Windows has the same problem on my laptop.

I’ll add to this - I can generally hack away at Linux, build my own yocto for custom SBCs etc but I gave up trying to get my QC35s paired with my Linux box

Thanks for saying this. I'm a Mac user. I don't know jack about this stuff. It's easy for Linux users to say "it works for me dummy!". But it doesn't work for me. I had to run CLI commands just to install Brave, are you kidding me? (https://brave.com/linux/)

I can't imagine less computer savvy people putting up with this.

If your distribution offers synaptic it helps immensely as a gateway drug to apt/rpm.

https://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/

But to install it you still need the cli. After that you get a GUI interface to search and install packages

A lot of the "beginner friendly" distros will install a GUI frontend in the default install and label it "software center" or "app store" or similar.

Only certain ones -- not AirPods, for example.

They work as headphones, but not as a headset with microphone (for reasons that are not really Apple's fault)

Does the mic in your headphones work?

Edited to clarify that while 3 pairs of headphones required fiddling to get 1 connected, the microphone was basically impossible to get working. The majority of threads I've found online have said basically not to bother with getting bluetooth headphones+mic, use a wired one or something else.

I have two different Jabra bluetooth headsets, both work on Linux with a microphone, but you have to change to the headphone profile (using something like pavu) to enable the microphone.

I use them regularly as well, never had a problem, not even when setting them up the first time.

microphone too? What model, I'll get it.

Ironically, I suspect Apple is the reason end-user Linux isn't dramatically farther along on the adoption curve.

I feel like story of my move the Mac is not at all uncommon: in the very late 90s, when I was doing mostly consulting and not really any coding, my work life revolved around emails and office docs. Windows on laptops of the era was AWFUL -- long boot times, unstable/unusable device sleep, frequent crashes, etc.

I had a coworker using a G3 PowerBook, and his actual user experience was drastically better than mine by every metric (except, I guess, in that his Powerbook was significantly heavier than my super-sleek ThinkPad). Crashes were rare. Boot time was fast, but it mattered less because sleep actually worked.

I switched. Then the dot-com crash happened, and our company failed, and I hung my own shingle out -- and right about that moment, OS X happened.

My Mac went from being difficult to work on (for a LAMP-stack person) to being the IDEAL platform. I had a real bash prompt, on a machine that shipped with all the tools I wanted, and on which I could easily install most anything else (even if, early on, I had to build from source) -- and this same machine ran true Office, and had a host of really well-designed other applications and utilities that made my more productive and happier. It was a total win. And now, 20+ years later, I'm still here, typing on a Mac.

If OS X hadn't happened, then the work I had after the dot-com crash would've pushed me and a lot of other people like me to full-time Linux.

same with me. Tried mac once 7 years ago, didnt work out so I sold my macbook pro. 4 years later, my new workplace gave me mac and topd me windows laptop is moatly only for QA. Then I realized its actually a good thing and I learnt a lot by just using mac and get myself familiar with linux as well.

I like the idea of Apple as a bridge to the global awakening of Linux :)

- Bluetooth headphones

I've never had that much to do to get them to just work.

I have done some Bluetooth tinkering to:

(A) Get them to use high quality codecs, something which also requires tinkering for a Mac: https://medium.com/macoclock/how-to-enable-aptx-on-mac-osx-b... - that's with pulse. With newer, Pipewire using, systems, even that is not needed which for my use case puts Linux ahead of Mac OS for Bluetooth headphone support.

(B) my previous headphones would get super confused if I paired them on Linux and windows on my dual boot device as they'd see different keys on the same host and that broke them so copied my keys from my Linux config files to my windows registry so both would use the same keys. My newer headphones seem to "just handle" this situation though. This is a dual boot issue and not specifically a Linux issue. My Linux only devices are fine.

- Mouse. I have since 2005, never had any issues with any mouse on Linux ever. Not even for all the extra buttons on my current Logitech mouse where they just happily show up as mouse button 5-9 and I can bind them in games.

- Brave: Honestly I'm surprised Pop is not setting up a GUI package manager with proprietary software able to be installed from it with their target market, but I'll take your word for this one.

Does the microphone in your bluetooth headphones work?

Brave: Just to clarify, it's Brave.com itself that only has CLI instructions

From https://brave.com/linux/ ---

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser...

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main"|sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list

sudo apt update

sudo apt install brave-browser

> Does the microphone in your bluetooth headphones work?

Yes. I had to go into the audio settings to change between Headphones (high quality audio) and Headset (mic enabled) modes which is a bluetooth thing. But it works, and is a thing I need to do on Windows also.

(Actually on Windows I go out of my way to disable the headset device, because it just makes everything bad by being enabled - communication programs mute my everything, the audio playback becomes bad, and the microphone quality on my headphones is just worse than on my webcam, never mind my desk mic, so I never want to use it)

---

Yeah, that's a Brave thing. They probably (rightly to be fair) assume most current Linux users understand the command line enough to follow those steps and Brave would prefer users get the browser from their repos so they don't have to deal with users having potentially out of date browsers in support requests.

But you can get Brave in a snap, which to my understanding means you can get it in software center on Ubuntu, Manjaro, etc. And you can probably install the snap store on Pop also.

Chrome on the other hand just serves you a package you can double click to install, if you'd rather get it from them rather than your package manager/app store: https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/chrome/

> Linux doesn't support bluetooth headphones for example.

That’s not true. I’ve been using Bluetooth on Linux since 2015, on at least 3 different machines. I hate to be a Linux trope, but you probably haven’t set it up right. Finding the right distro will be key to your Linux experience, because the good distros make these things easy. The right distro won’t require anything beyond a GUI to pair with your BT device, if that’s what you want.

Does the microphone work in your headphones? Let me know what model I'll check it out.

The thread following this is a great example of Linux’s fatal issue. 5 different people have 5 different user stories.

Public uptake requires ease of use and consistency.

And, at least with some people, almost a dismissal of someone else's problem.

"It does too work, you're wrong. All I had to do was write some code, install a few things, and recompile the kernel and my headphones work most of the time. Have you tried writing a new driver for your headphones?"

It would be funny if this weren't true right in this thread. The best example I can point to is Brave's only option to install on Linux involves a blob of CLI commands: https://brave.com/linux/

Linux has to grow beyond being built by and for mechanics.

Looking at it, those commands are not horrible, or unreasonable.. for a developer or someone comfortable with the command line.

However, the 'average user' is going to be annoyed and lost with those commands.

The average user is going to use Firefox instead. Advanced users who know to open "Terminal" will attempt to just copy and paste the blob of code and hope it works. Training new users to do this is a bad habit that will bite the Linux community in the ass later.

> I had always thought I chose Apple. But it wasn't a choice really because there are no other viable alternatives.

Looking back, that seems accurate. Though it was perhaps not entirely about viability but more about sheer convenience, sheer joy of shit just working, etc.

Unfortunately it seems we ended up sacrificing freedom at the altar of convenience..

Doh! It's true.

For me it boils down to trading freedom for bluetooth headphones/mic that just work.

> - Linux doesn't support bluetooth headphones well

FTFY: "Everyone except macOS doesn't support bluetooth well".

The Windows situation is a horrid mess - it was with w7 and at least three different commercial stacks, and my s/o can't use her brand new Sony headphones on her three year old w10 Lenovo laptop as it ends up in stuttering audio. Linux isn't better. Audio stacks are a mess (even independent of Bluetooth), BTLE is an even worse mess, and I have no idea why Android is relentlessly buggy. And the Nintendo Switch doesn't support anything except compatible controllers, you need an external, third party adapter that blocks the docking port for decent wireless capability.

The only ones who have managed something decent with Bluetooth are Apple, where everything you ordinarily need (headphones, mice, keyboards) just works (tm).

The core problem is that Bluetooth itself is an old, ugly, grown standard with lots of different stuff bolted on, not much in terms of interoperability testing and closed binary blobs everywhere.

Good context. Given that Bluetooth is the issue, what should we do instead? Some new standard? I've seen some headphones that offer a non-Bluetooth USB wireless dongle (Corsair)

> Some new standard?

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/

I'm not sure. From an implementation POV, re-starting wUSB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB) again would be an easy way out - for a lot of things that can be done over Bluetooth there are USB device classes and drivers already, so all that would be required on the OS side is support for a discovery/secure pairing mechanism.

And here I am, in process of purging linux from all the servers and workstations replacing them with BSD and illumos. Linux is not the only option and in fact, should never be the only option.

Use a distro that adopted Pipewire for good BT headset support.

In my experience, if a Chromebook can fit a user's use case, than so can desktop Linux.

Then* not than.

Are you sure you didn't get a lemon? I haven't heard of others complaining about System76 BT issues. On the other hand I've heard of many people having BT issues with Apple laptops. BT never worked on one of my work Macbooks.

I'm running PopOS on a Surface Pro 3 and it's nearly flawless, including BT.

It's a Linux problem, not computer hardware problem.

Does the mic in your headphones work? Let me know the model, I'll check it out for myself.

What OS?

I have a 2+-year old Darter Pro, running Pop OS 20.10, which has been wonderful. Bluetooth just works (as long as there is only one user attempting to use it), the mic just works, the mouse just works. Also, System76 support is the best I've encountered since I bought my first computer in the 80s.

It's a Linux/bluetooth issue not a computer vendor issue.

Yes support is terrific. What mic/headphones do you use?

I eventually got the Sony XM3s to play sound after a bunch of CLI commands and random Linux threads. But bluetooth mic never worked.

Support recommended getting a wired mic. I figured they would know, having talked to all sorts of users.

Don't use a mic. For external audio, I use bluetooth.

wow. what distro are you using? mint cinnamon is pretty modern (especially after you theme it) and bluetooth headphones have worked quite well for a long time. never had a mouse not work...there's even a small program to pair logitech devices. i guess this dell 7470 works better with linux than sys76. only driver i've had to install was for my gpu and there's even a program for that!

The Linux Bluetooth experience may not be as slick as apple’s, but it certainly works as expected.

Bluemon + pulseaudio + pavucontrol has served me well for years.

I guess it's a matter of what you think of as "as expected."

Pairing events, and switching between devices, is a dead easy with Apple gear. Non-Apple peripherals work very very smoothly, too, though when there's an Apple option I tend to pick that because of the additional ease of use.

Windows is materially worse. Linux lags Windows.

I'm not a developer, I don't understand CLI, and I can copy paste stuff to the best of my ability.

I spent 4 hours getting my Sony XM3 headphones to connect. They finally played sound. I never got the mic to work at all.

Linux is not ready for mainstream adoption. The fact that you need to mention 3 packages needed is proof.

Well, to add to the anecdata, I set my Dad up with a System76 machine years ago and he's been chugging alone with zero complaints.

Zero complaints...to you. I can see giving up on asking other Linux users for help if they're so dismissive. Users aren't wrong. Apple gets that. If you have a problem getting something basic to work, it's Apple's fault, not the user's fault.

This will be a hard cultural shift to make for Linux culture given their starting point today.

System76 takes full responsibility for their machines. My Dad has a number to call if something doesn’t work… and it’s not mine.

I really appreciate System76's work here. Paying a few hundred dollars more for friendly understanding Linux experts I can email support questions to is the bargain of a lifetime. Also, apologies for my harsh previous reply.

What version of pop os? My PC wouldn't even work with Ubuntu 20 because the kernel drivers were not there yet until 21.04.

You’re individual experience isn’t universal.

Running Fedora 34 on X1 Carbon. Bliss.

Linux is community driven, if somethings not working, try fix it?

His point is that it's not ready for the average person. I would not expect the average person to switch from something that works out of the box to having to fiddle with trying to find an answer just to get where they were before.

OP is 100% correct. I also love how you basically say "well it works for me" which is a common answer I seem to hear from so many Linux users. It's like customer support responding "well, I can't recreate the issue."

I can honestly say that in recent times (last 2 years) I never had to fiddle with Fedora to get it working.

It just works.

Replying here to say I agree with the other posters.

I'm not a developer. I need a system to do my work. I need to do video calls using a bluetooth headset with a microphone.

I'm not in a position to spend time "fixing". But I am in a position to pay. But Linux seems to have few options available to pay for polish. I would pay $500 this instant to have the ease of connectivity that Apple has on this Linux machine.

Some days I spend 5 hours on the phone with my Bluetooth headset, I have no issues with it at all.

Glad to hear it, I hope this experience becomes the standard for Linux.

> I'm not a developer. I need to work. I just need a computer to work on and have video calls with a bluetooth mic. Not doable on Linux after spending $1500 on a new computer.

> Linux has been built and used by brilliant mechanics, but it is time for Linux to be used by all.

> Linux is community driven, if somethings not working, try fix it?

That works if you're 20 and studying at university. After wasting over half my awake day at work, the last thing I have energy left for is dealing with random bullshit and tracing down bugs.

Also, most people don’t have great time management skills (myself included) so never really have any slack time.

>Linux has been built and used by brilliant mechanics, but it is time for Linux to be used by all.

it will be very hard for Linux to be used at home/corporate PC.

Apple/Microsoft started out in the home/corporate PC. Apple with Apple 1 and Microsoft's DOS. They are too entrench in the PC industry. Linux shine in server, mobile, IoT and embedded devices.