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.
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.
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.
It's not just about the money, it's also a way for devs to feel that their work matters.
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.
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.
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.
Have you thought about donating to open source projects to support them along?
Linux is the only viable option. It must improve.
Until Linux works out of the box for everyone it’s not going to see mainstream adoption.
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
Same, could not get Airpods to connect AT ALL. They would show up, "connect" for a second then disconnect.
- 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.
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".
The very first DDG result for "airpods linux bluetooth" is this one: https://askubuntu.com/questions/922860/pairing-apple-airpods...
Re: airpods linux bluetooth -- CLI commands to get bluetooth headphones just to play sound is not viable for Linux to take off.
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.
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.
I can't imagine less computer savvy people putting up with this.
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
They work as headphones, but not as a headset with microphone (for reasons that are not really Apple's fault)
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.