[Wylug-discuss] Bluetooth Keyboards and Mice

[Paul Brook]

> Could anyone with experience of using Bluetooth input devices with Linux
> tell me if it's practical? ... and what sort of kit I need, i.e. is it
> just a question of buying one of those cheap USB Bluetooth dongles?

Yes, a cheap bluetooth dongle should do the trick.  There's a few different 
chipsets, but I think most of them work.  One of the really annoying things 
is that for political reasons last time I checked there isn't an official 
list of compatible devices[1].

I've successfully used bluetooth kbd+mice on a variety of linux machines.
Most Bluetooth input devices use a standard HID profile, so like with USB 
they "Just Work".

The trick with bluetooth is that you have get the two devices to "pair" with 
each other. While the Linux bluetooth stack seems to be fairly solid and all 
the functionality is there, configuring it seems to be a bit sketchy.

Paul

[1] The background is that to claim to be "Bluetooth Compatible" your 
implementation needs to be certified by bluetooth association.  This is an 
attempt to ensure that all bluetooth devices actually work. However for 
fairly obvious reasons this doesn't work well with open source implementation 
where users are able/encouraged to modify it.