[Wolves] bluetooth maturity

[Andy Wootton]

David Morley wrote:

> My Wife has just been given a laptop by her work (for her work 
> unfortunately).  What I would like to know is the current bluetooth 
> set up in linux powerful enough for her to share my internet 
> connection and would it be easily set up?  I can set up the hci-tools 
> to register my pda so I know roughly what to do.  She is running 
> Windows Xp (so would samba need to be configured) but I might get rid 
> of it and put something decent like Ubuntu on if her work would allow 
> it.  The laptop is an IBM Thinkpad R50e it is quite old so it has no 
> built in wireless or bluetooth only a modem,  so I thought it would be 
> cheaper just to get a usb bluetooth dongle than a wireless router and 
> card but don't know if it is feasable.

I don't think Bluetooth will be any good to you. It is aimed at 
relatively slow serial devices like keyboards, mice and mobile phones. 
You'd be better off using WiFi; probably 802.11g would be the best bet 
currently. You only NEED a Wireless Access Point or router if you have 3 
or more wireless hosts. 2 nodes only or a WAP would require you to set 
up your other node as a router. This may not be easy and I haven't done 
it. Expect to learn a lot if you try. WiFi works in Linux if you use a  
supported card. Look at the hardware compatibility list for you distro.

Beware that now or in future your wife may be subject to internal 
security policies that forbid her from connecting to another network. If 
she isn't, consider whether you wanted a PC that isn't secured 
connecting to your network.

Woo