Bluetooth is a wonderful technology when it works. I have been using a laptop with built-in Bluetooth support for over 5 years. I’ve upgraded from a tiny IOgear mouse to a Microsoft bluetooth travel mouse 5000. Having internal bluetooth makes perfect sense when you want to protect your valuable USB ports from damage and the cost is nominal and usually around $25. You also get the benefit of having empty USB ports for other things like a light, fan, or USB memory sticks.
I’ve also paired my Nokia BH-503 bluetooth Headphones, which produce high-quality stereo right along side the mouse with the same bluetooth chip and have no lag in either one. This goes for my Apple bluetooth keyboard I won in a contest. All three devices on one connection without lag… pretty cool, huh?
Using these features is about as simple as SuSE was, but can be done in the GUI from the system status area. Just enable your device to be seen, click the bluetooth icon, setup new device from the status tool and in about 20 seconds and a PIN (Ubuntu can even provide the correct one for you) & you’re ready to party! Yeah, there’s one more trick to getting stereo, but that involves selecting that option from the Sound properties menu, again found in the system status area. You can even use bluetooth tethering with cell phone for data transfer as well as web access.
My old favorite Linux distro is SuSE. Yeah, that fine product from evil Novell (only evil because of Microsoft deal). I liked SuSE because it just worked for lots of hardware and configuration was all integrated into the YaST control center. That said, SuSE was and is (as of this posting) very painful to update due to cumbersome YaST or smart package manager. The biggest reason I left SuSE is the lack of updated packages. I need the latest, greatest to keep on top of the Linux hill.
Ubuntu on the otherhand, is now my favorite and will remain so now that I’ve found the solution to the bluetooth mouse connection. I can simply flip the small switch on the mouse and it is recognized. This is true between boots and (hopefully) hibernate/suspend actions.
I looked high and low thru the torrent of Google’s results on bluetooth. I found lots of references to howtos on Ubuntu, Debian, SuSE, Slackware, etc… You name it, people have had issues just like mine. I loved the way bluetooth worked in suse. Type “hidd –search” as root one (1) time and it was recognized. So nice.
This solution is simple enough to cause not one ounce of pain, and like most all Linux solutions no reboot is required.
Solution:
Open a terminal (konsole, gnome-terminal, etc.)
Ensure Bluetooth is turned on or your bluetooth dongle is connected.
Type "hidd --search"
Write down the ID of your mouse (similar to AA:BB:CC:DD:FF:GG)
Press the “connect” button on your mouse.
Type -
"sudo nano /etc/default/bluetooth"
Enter your password (if you are super user (aka root)
Find the following line.
HIDD_ENABLED=1
Make sure there are lines like the following for your device.
HIDD_OPTIONS="--server --search"
HIDD_OPTIONS="--connect AA:BB:CC:DD:FF:GG --server"
where the “AA:BB:CC:DD:FF:GG” is the device ID you copied down on paper (or elsewhere).
Add any other devices you need (like another mouse).
Save the file.
Restart bluetooth services with:
/etc/init.d/bluetooth restart
That should do it….
Now press the connect button on the mouse. You should be able to use it just as you’d expect.
nomasteryoda