[H-GEN] Bluetooth under LInux

[Joel Michael]

Geoff Shang wrote:

> I see that everythinglinux has something like four adaptors on sale,
> ranging in price from $40 to $90 or something.  I was wondering if anyone
> has had any experience with bluetooth under LInux, and these adaptors in
> particular?

I have used a fair amount of Bluetooth under Linux, doing stuff with my 
mobile phone (GPRS Internet, PIM Sync with Evolution, Haven't figured 
out file transfers yet).  I have got the D-Link one that is featured on 
the everythinglinux site, the other one looks suspiciously like a 
Belkin, which I have also used.

I can't really recommend one over the other, only because I only used 
the Belkin one for a month or so.

As for the software, I'd highly suggest upgrading to the very latest 
version of the BlueZ utils, as the one that came with Red Hat 9 didn't 
work for me, but the one in Rawhide worked fine (This was almost a year 
ago, though, so things may have changed in that time).

You also need a few tricks to set up GPRS Internet access (at least with 
Telstra, different carriers may be different, YMMV) - there is no 
username and password at all, not even a null username and password.  If 
you even try, the connection will fail.

For PIM Sync, I successfully used Multisync.  It seems to work quite 
well (apart from the occasional eating of contacts from Evolution, but 
that's what backups are for ;-)