Re: [gentoo-user] Bluetooth compatibility

[Thomas Kear <thomas.kear@gmail.com>]

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On Thursday 02 November 2006 2:27 pm, Grant wrote:
> I need a wireless headset to use with my softphone.  My laptop doesn't
> have bluetooth built-in so I need a USB bluetooth adapter and
> bluetooth headset.  Has anyone used bluetooth with Gentoo?  Should I
> be researching both devices' Linux compatibility, or just the adapter?
>
> - Grant

Well as already mentioned, just about any adapter should be fine.  If you feel 
like doing some research, find something with a Camridge Silicon Radio (CSR) 
chipset, they are the most common and consequently the best supported.

As far as the headset goes, you should be fine.  I use a Sony Ericsson 
HBH-IV835 with my gentoo/amd64 pc without too many issues.  The driver that 
couples the headset to an alsa audio device is at 
http://bluetooth-alsa.sf.net

As far as ebuilds go, they are in Liquidx's dev overlay (layman -a liquidx), 
called btsco and btsco-kernel.  There is a marginally outdated but still 
useful howto at http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_use_a_bluetooth_headset

Note: you will probably want to install bluez-libs and bluez-utils 2.25, 3.7 
opens up a whole new set of problems with the dbus pin authentication, you 
really just don't want to go there.  Your life will also be made a lot easier 
if you install kdebluetooth or gnome-bluetooth to get a frontend for 
configuration, device searches, file transfer (if you have a bluetooth phone 
also), etc.

--Thomas

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