I searched through the posts here on the forum to find which, Bluetooth devices work the best with Clear Linux. What I found were mostly posts where, people have problems with the one they have. So, I thought I would start a post to ask; Please post what type of Bluetooth device you have that either, worked straight out of the box or was very easy to install.
I don’t have Bluetooth for this computer and would like to buy a decent device that actually works! Please post what you have and a link to it if, you can.
Clearlinux uses the Linux kernel so you should be looking for a bluetooth that is compatible and supported without any kind of seperate kernel module.
Personally I would stay away from Realtek based anything (I had their 8821cu wifi usb dongle,big mistake) and go for Intel chips which supports the latest Bluetooth standard which looks like 5.3 . I dont know your use scenario. You should make sure that they dont need any DKMS module for current stable kernel. Also be careful about ‘audio only’ adapters which only supports headphones.
Edit: A Reddit user asked this question first and after finding answers, edited his post to add information. Here it is Reddit - Dive into anything
OK, so, I tried installing the downloaded drivers.
cd /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/
Ran the following command found in the readme file.
sudo make install INTERFACE=usb
mkdir -p /lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/kernel/drivers/bluetooth
Start Realtek Bluetooth USB driver installation
mkdir -p /lib/firmware
Copy rtkbt-firmware/lib/firmware/rtl*_fw to /lib/firmware
cp -a rtkbt-firmware/lib/firmware/rtl*_fw /lib/firmware
Copy rtkbt-firmware/lib/firmware/rtl*_config /lib/firmware
cp -a rtkbt-firmware/lib/firmware/rtl*_config /lib/firmware
make -C usb install
make[1]: Entering directory ‘/home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb’
rmmod btusb
mv /lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb.ko /lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb_bak
mv: cannot stat ‘/lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb.ko’: No such file or directory
make[1]: [Makefile:8: install] Error 1 (ignored)
rmmod rtk_btusb
rmmod: ERROR: Module rtk_btusb is not currently loaded
make[1]: [Makefile:9: install] Error 1 (ignored)
make -C ./bluetooth_usb_driver
make[2]: Entering directory ‘/home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver’
make -C /lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/build M=/home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver modules
make[3]: Entering directory ‘/usr/lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/build’
CC [M] /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_coex.o
CC [M] /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_misc.o
In file included from ./include/linux/string.h:374,
from ./include/linux/bitmap.h:13,
from ./include/linux/cpumask.h:13,
from ./arch/x86/include/asm/cpumask.h:5,
from ./arch/x86/include/asm/msr.h:11,
from ./arch/x86/include/asm/tsc.h:10,
from ./arch/x86/include/asm/timex.h:6,
from ./include/linux/timex.h:67,
from ./include/linux/time32.h:13,
from ./include/linux/time.h:60,
from ./include/linux/stat.h:19,
from ./include/linux/module.h:13,
from /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_misc.c:23:
In function ‘fortify_memcpy_chk’,
inlined from ‘load_config.constprop’ at /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_misc.c:1789:4:
./include/linux/fortify-string.h:571:25: warning: call to ‘__write_overflow_field’ declared with attribute warning: detected write beyond size of field (1st parameter); maybe use struct_group()? [-Wattribute-warning]
571 | __write_overflow_field(p_size_field, size);
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CC [M] /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_bt.o
LD [M] /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_btusb.o
MODPOST /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/Module.symvers
CC [M] /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_btusb.mod.o
LD [M] /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_btusb.ko
BTF [M] /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_btusb.ko
Skipping BTF generation for /home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_btusb.ko due to unavailability of vmlinux
make[3]: Leaving directory ‘/usr/lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/build’
make[2]: Leaving directory ‘/home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver’
cp -f ./bluetooth_usb_driver/rtk_btusb.ko /lib/modules/6.10.2-1454.native/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/rtk_btusb.ko
depmod -a 6.10.2-1454.native
make -C ./bluetooth_usb_driver clean
make[2]: Entering directory ‘/home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver’
rm -rf *.o *.mod.c *.mod.o *.ko *.symvers *.order *.a
make[2]: Leaving directory ‘/home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb/bluetooth_usb_driver’
echo “install rtk_btusb success!”
install rtk_btusb success!
make[1]: Leaving directory ‘/home/jwarren/Downloads/BT-8500_Linux_Bluetooth_Driver_1_0_0_3/usb’
+++++++++++++++++
Nothing really seemed to change after running the install and I’m able to connect and transfer files to two different cell phones so, really, that’s about all I needed to do with it. I’m sure streaming to other devices will work and I will test that with a few things I have that are Bluetooth capable. Audio casting from cell phone to computer speakers also works.
The app “serialtest” has a lot of functionality to it and was able to verify quite a few things with it in Bluetooth client mode. It also has a bluetooth server but haven’t got into that yet.
