Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on February 28, 2007 01:51 AM
I am using a super cheapo cellphone. I wanted to transfer my own graphics, mp3s, videos, and my own Java midlets for execution on the phone. I can put these on my Apache webserver, but my cell carrier charges me for bandwidth.
I knew Bluetooth would be zero cost. But what hardware to use? I researched, and found out that the official Bluetooth SIG does not allow anyone to designate anything as bluetooth compatible unless it has been certified by them for major bucks. Therefore, there is no official hardware compatibility list for Linux.
Here is my personal experience. I'm using a very ancient SuSE 9.1 (yeah, I know, I'm planning to upgrade to a shiny new Ubuntu in a few weeks). I thought that with such ancient software, there was little hope. I borrowed a friends USB Bluetooth dongle, and then tried the KDE Bluetooth Sync program. To my astonishment(!) it just worked! It found my phone. I could drag-drop files into it and click Send, then the phone would vibrate to tell me there was an incomming file.
Later, I bought my own different brand (Zoom) USB Dongle for about $20 at Microcenter. It also just worked. Furthermore, both dongles just worked on my partner's out of date Mac OS X system. No additional software needed. The stock OS just recognized it. I took my Zoom dongle in to work with me and tried it on Windows XP. It also just worked. This is stock Windows XP. I did not use any of the software that was included on the CD that came with the dongle.
Hope that experience helps. I expect that if you get a $20 Zoom usb bluetooth dongle, it will just work on Linux. YMMV. Hope that helps.
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Experiences with USB Bluetooth dongles on Linux
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on February 28, 2007 01:51 AMI knew Bluetooth would be zero cost. But what hardware to use? I researched, and found out that the official Bluetooth SIG does not allow anyone to designate anything as bluetooth compatible unless it has been certified by them for major bucks. Therefore, there is no official hardware compatibility list for Linux.
Here is my personal experience. I'm using a very ancient SuSE 9.1 (yeah, I know, I'm planning to upgrade to a shiny new Ubuntu in a few weeks). I thought that with such ancient software, there was little hope. I borrowed a friends USB Bluetooth dongle, and then tried the KDE Bluetooth Sync program. To my astonishment(!) it just worked! It found my phone. I could drag-drop files into it and click Send, then the phone would vibrate to tell me there was an incomming file.
Later, I bought my own different brand (Zoom) USB Dongle for about $20 at Microcenter. It also just worked. Furthermore, both dongles just worked on my partner's out of date Mac OS X system. No additional software needed. The stock OS just recognized it. I took my Zoom dongle in to work with me and tried it on Windows XP. It also just worked. This is stock Windows XP. I did not use any of the software that was included on the CD that came with the dongle.
Hope that experience helps. I expect that if you get a $20 Zoom usb bluetooth dongle, it will just work on Linux. YMMV. Hope that helps.
DannyB
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