The Netbook Newbie's Guide to Linux

Back to the Bluez

By Chris Bidmead • Get more from this author

13th April 2009 08:02 GMT

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Asus Eee PC users may be less lucky with Bluetooth. The very full instructions on the Eee PC User Group web page point out that "the Eee install of Linux comes with Bluetooth support enabled, but there is no way to configure or use it from the graphical interface. The command-line must be used".

Readers of previous episodes here shouldn't have much of a problem with that. But the User Group guidelines go on to add, fatefully: "However, this is trivial."

'Trivial' in the special sense of 'not possible', that is - at least if my experience is anything to go by. Although Linux seems recognise the Bluetooth dongle as powered up, I simply couldn't get its LED to flash at all.

A quick chat with Phil Simes on Cambridge Silicon Radio's support desk confirmed that the problem might be that the Asus machine was delivering marginally less power than the dongle was expecting. As the latest generation of Eee PCs are already Bluetooth enabled there didn't seem much point in pursuing this.

Has anyone else got this working? If you have, please let me know how, by posting a comment or emailing me using the byline link above.

What's Really Missing

In the very early days of Unix, features like Bluetooth capability - not that such a thing existed then - would be compiled into the kernel, but for over a decade now the practice has been to create them as separate modules, optionally loadable either by user intervention or - more commonly - automatically on demand. Plug in your Bluetooth USB dongle: the operating system recognises it and loads the relevant modules. All modern operating systems work like this.

But unlike Windows, or Mac OS X, the kernel at the heart of the Linux operating system - or, strictly speaking, the Linux at the core of the GNU/Linux system - has been evolving very fast. So although a Mac OS X "kernel extension" (a .kext) created five years ago might be expected to work with the current Mac OS X, a kernel module compiled to run with some random version of Linux probably won't work with the 2.6.23.9lw kernel at the heart of the AA1's Linpus.

This has always been true of Linux/Unix, and although it sounds like a headache, it's actually part of the great strength of an operating system that runs across a huge range of different hardware. It works because kernel modules are traditionally distributed as source code, something made possible by the fact that every full version of Linux is also a development system, with its own set of compilers, linkers and all the other paraphernalia necessary to crunch source code into binary executables.

Every version of Linux - except, that is, for the pre-cooked, locked-down Linuxes turning up on today's netbooks. In the case of the AA1, I see that it may not be as grim as that. The Package Manager - which you can get to if you followed the instructions for attaining the AA1's "advanced mode" in Episode 3 - promises a set of Development Tools and Libraries, which should bring Linpus up to full spec. I haven't installed any of this because the spirit of this series is not to get too hairy.