Hello,
I am not able to figure out whatever bluetooth issues I am having. None of my devices stay connected and will never reconnect once disconnected. I have a pair of WH-XM4 and they will not stay connected. Here is what I tried so far:
Reinstall BlueZ
Check for blocking with rfkill
Restart Bluetooth, but I just get this error “Bluez Daemon is not running, blueman-manager cannot continue”
I’m at my wits end. Please help.
My experience with Bluetooth support in Linux is: you’re either using one of the very few problem-free BT controllers and it works okay most of the time, or you have more or less problems all of the time.
The least problematic controllers I own are ASUS USB-BT500. The most problematic are ASUS USB-BT400 and Realtek RTL8821CE.
The state of Bluetooth in Linux is completely terrible, it has been for many, many years and it’s hardly getting any better. Bluez, like Pulseaudio, needs to die, and sooner rather than later.
Lol well I am using BT400 dongle, so that doesn’t bode too well. As a new user, why is Bluetooth so bad? Don’t love Windows, but at least Bluetooth is painless over there, for the most part
A lot of those BT adapters are cheap shit. Like the aforementioned RTL8821CE: it’s a nasty hack to do wifi and BT using a single 2.4 GHz transponder. But here’s the thing: however bad they are, they’re made to work well in Windows - possibly with a lot of awful engineering shortcuts and hackery, but in the end, Windows users will never know and that’s the point.
When open-source developers try to make equivalent Linux drivers without documentation or help from the manufacturer, reverse-engineering their way around the general crappiness of the products, you get… well, not very good drivers. And it really is nobody’s fault but the unhelpful adapter’s manufacturer.
So there is that, and the general bugginess on BlueZ on top of it.
Thanks for the added context. That makes sense
Buy a supported usb bt dongle, they’re tiny. Better than fighting with models that don’t work well.
The most problematic are ASUS USB-BT400 and Realtek RTL8821CE
Can confirm. The Realtek adapter in my HP laptop is a major PITA. Both BT & wifi have problems that I’ve only able to partially resolve.
BlueZ has/had some problematic issues with connectivity. Bazzite and other distros had problems a few months ago that sound awfully similar to what you’re experiencing. I’m not as familiar with how Mint handles packages (like if they have their own repos with specific package versions), but it might be that your specific version is behind the fixes.
Hello, thanks for the response. I might have found the issue. Running dmesg I saw some errors, so I realized I never downloaded a driver for the Bluetooth dongle I’ve been using. I did and rebooted and now I don’t see the error anymore and my headphones are working.
I do appreciate the response. I want to daily drive linux and never go back to windows
You’ll get there.
I’ve been doing it for over 25 years and although it’s been hard at times, I’ve never regretted it.
You need to check the various logs, dmesg, syslog and probably manually start the services on a command line to see what errors they produce.
I have similar problems with devices disconnecting from my Realtek BT/wifi card. I was able to significantly reduce (but not completely eliminate) the problems by disabling power management for the BT adapter’s associated USB port.
Mint has been the most particular distro for bluetooth for me. I noticed there is a difference between “connecting” and “pairing”. I have to “pair” the first time my device is connected and then “connect” every subsequent time. If I pair the device to another computer I have to re-pair on Mint.
I have several issues getting Bluetooth to work on my machine as well. I ended up getting a Linux compatible Bluetooth dongle and using bluetoothctl for managing connections. It’s still a very manual way to connect my headphones to my machine but I still prefer it over wires.
