My reform came with the optional Intel 6E PCI module. Wifi works fine but there’s no sign of bluetooth.
I hadn’t paid attention before because it never had BT and I sort of assumed there was none when I got the machine, so I plugged in a USB BT adapter and rolled with that. But today I noticed this Intel chipset is supposed to provide BT too, and I could use a spare USB port.
As far as I can tell, all the modules are loaded, I have the iwlwifi firmware package installed, there’s no error, but no BT adapter shows up.
In case you don’t mind to share, I’d like to hear which bluetooth usb dongle you use. The A311D with integrated bluetooth was the first bluetooth adapter I ever used which was reliable. I always thought that bluetooth worked fine for other people because I’m using Linux and well, stuff does just not work as well as it does for the Apple user but it turns out with the right adapter (like the one integrated in A311D) I get bluetooth coverage of our whole flat and zero connection or quality drops. I feel like it’s the 21st century.
And I now have the RK3588 and I need bluetooth again.
The state of bluetooth on Linux is just shamefully terrible. It’s been like that for many years and it shows no signs of ever becoming less shitty.
After much experimentation, the only two dongles that consistently work reliably for me are either the Asus BT400 or Asus BT500. I have a bunch of both: usually the BT500 is more reliable, but when it proves flaky on one machine / distro, I switch to the BT400 and it’s usually fine.
On my classic Reform / RK3588 running MNT’’s flavor of Sid, the BT400 is the one that works well.
Haha okay, then I guess my initial instinct of blaming Linux might not’ve been that far off. I feel reminded of your “don’t blame MNT” post because I immediately blamed Linux when bluetooth just didn’t work for me for many years and I only tried it out with A311D because a user on IRC was asking a question and then noticed that for some reason it didn’t suck at all.
Thank you for the recommendation! I already found one of them second hand in my city.
If your needs are limited to BT Audio I can’t recommend Creative dongles enough, I’ve used them on OpenBSD for some time (no BT at all there), and the recent one, BT-W5 works great with Pocket.
Yes. I’ve used the Creative BT-W2 with great success. I switched to the A311D bluetooth because the BT-W2 did not manage to reach all corners of my flat but the A311D bluetooth easily did. I didn’t know that Creative now has a W5 so maybe I shall check that one out as well because the W2 worked flawlessly and indeed I’m only interested in audio.
(and yes, configuring a soundcard, which is what the W2 shows up for linux, is much easier than configuring bluetooth audio in software)
I wasn’t aware there’s an updated version, I’ve used BT-W3 and BT-W5, I prefer to use those even on machines with BT. I’ve never had any issues with the range, but my requirements are also fairly low.
