Submitted by “My old mobile phone, which was held together with duct tape for the last few months of its sad existence, has finally been replaced with something more modern. I wanted to pick up a programmable, Linux-based phone like the RAZR2V8 or the FIC Neo1973, but I’m unfortunately a Verizon customer, which means that my options are currently very, very limited—at least until Verizon follows through with its open network plans.” More here.
Using a Bluetooth Phone with Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The only thing I was unable to do is to use my PC as an internet gateway to my Sony Ericsson k550.
Transfering files (even being slow) is very easy also there are remote control pfor programs like amarok that is great.
Anyone have an idea about how to synch a Motorola’s A1200 (MING) addressbook with ANYTHING on Linux? My old V3 used to work somewhat, after some tweaking; but the Linux-based A1200 doesn’t even work with Moto4Lin.
It’s pretty stupid that I have to run Motorola’s butt-ugly software in WinXP under VMware to synch my Linux-based phone with my Linux machine.
Check out Kmobiletools:
http://www.kmobiletools.org/
From Digg.com:
“Who says Linux isn’t hard to use?”
Seriously speaking, The first page seemed alright; I was amazed that there were GUI screenshots and it appeared as if Linux (desktop) was on its way to an intuitive solution then i scrolled to the second page and lord help me all i saw were console commands with arcane switches and what not. This article really should not be featured as a breakthrough. People will come clamoring once someone writes an article describing a Bluetooth phone pairing with Linux using an intuitive 4-step dialog window with merely a set of checkboxes and “Next” and “Done” butons.
Call me spoiled; I use a Mac for my desktops, a Windows box for … an extra desktop when I don’t have an available Mac… but I swear by my linux system AS A SERVER, via remote console.
In any case, good job to the hackers for tearing apart this process and giving the brave few a chance to be early adopters. Hope they come up with an easy, POLISHED method soon.
You’re right, Bluetooth on Linux sucks, I won’t change my Mac and it’s bluetooth utilites for anything else
People will come clamoring once someone writes an article describing a Bluetooth phone pairing with Linux using an intuitive 4-step dialog window with merely a set of checkboxes and “Next” and “Done” butons.
When I try to pair with my Linux box I just get a prompt on the screen asking for the passkey and permission to pair. That’s all. Not very hard. I guess it just depends on what software one uses though. I’ve installed gnome-bluetooth which handles all such. Though, if I want to send some file to the computer from my phone I have to separately run gnome-obex-server….It’d be a lot better if that was part of gnome-bluetooth.
agreed with 47ronin… looked great at the start, but got progressively more geeky.
I loved where the author tell you he installed the bluetooth drivers… which were intuitively called “gnome-vfs-obexftp” .. doesn’t everyone know that they’re bluetooth drivers!!
Setting up bluetooth is already enough of a pain in Windows. (create serial connection via bluetooth, etc!) but Linux just looks impossible. No one would be able to just “figure it out” from looking at the UI. It’s something you either know or you don’t and that is my big beef with linux… you need to know how to hack to do ANYTHING useful.
Give me Windows or OSX anyday…. hell I’d even rather run Vista! (which I do, and it’s awful)
My desktop computer doesn’t have built-in Bluetooth support, so I used a cheap USB Bluetooth adapter. I started by installing GNOME’s Bluetooth tools. On Ubuntu, that is the gnome-bluetooth package.
If you’d care to read the article next time, ok? This is the part where he installs the Bluetooth support. Duh.
I also installed the gnome-vfs-obexftp package, which makes it possible to use GNOME’s file manager to transfer files between your computer and a Bluetooth-enabled phone
This is where he explains what gnome-vfs-obexftp is..
Though IMHO he should have mentioned it only works with phones supporting OBEX FTP which not even nearly all phones do. Most phones support OBEX object push but that’s not the same thing.
It’s very intuitive. They are the Gnome VFS plugins for obex access. They are not drivers. Also the author never said they were drivers, you made that up all by yourself.
ok if they’re not drivers. what on earth they… How would my mother know how to install Gnome-vfs to get bluetooth working. What on earth is VFS anyway.
This is part of the whole problem with computers. Most regular people don’t care to know what GNOME-vfs is… most regular uses probably woulnd’t know what Desktop they were running – true over linux, and windows desktops. They shouldn’t need to know what OBEX is, or indeed what ftp is. They want to plug in their usb bluetooth, and easily and simply sync their phone, headset, etc.
Computers should be simple, easy to understand and easy to explore – sadly they’re still not.