Hi

I'm still running Slack 10 with the default 2.4.26 kernel. Does this kernel support Bluetooth or do I need to upgrade for Bluetooth to work?

Thanks

Mikie

Does Bluetooth need to be built into the kernel? is bluetooth ever built into the kernel? I'm not sure, maybe you know, but I ran a quick google search and found this.... I can't post URL's yet, so just google 'bluetooth for linux' without the single quotes and it should be the first result.

You should check it out, its got some great info on bluetooth w/ linux.

Good luck.

Does Bluetooth need to be built into the kernel?

I would have expected kernel support to be a requirement for Bluetooth to work. I did your Google and as you say the first hit is http://www.holtmann.org/linux/kernel/.
There are patches here for kernels since 2.4.18 so I can download the patch for my kernel.
Many thanks for that

Mikie

Beside's the kernel patch, you will also need bluez-libs, and bluez-utils at the very least

Yes you need Bluetooth built in to your kernel. MH has patchsets available for the older kernel but why not update so one of the 2.6 series? Much better support by default.

From there for basic support you need bluez-libs and bluez-utils installed. What are you trying to do exactly? Copying files to mobiles phones etc require things like Openobex as well so tell me what you want the end result to be and I'll tell you what you need to do to get there

I would mainly want to download photos and maybe video clips from my mobile phone. It would also be cool to upload ring-tones from my PC but it's not a priority

Mikie

It seems that KDE has good bluetooth support within their file manager, you can transfer files between PC and mobile phone via Bluetooth by some mouse clicks. Try google for it.

Hammett's LQ tutorial(under Applications/GUI/Multimedia) "USB Bluetooth and mobile file transfers" discusses file/pix transfer to SW and kernel changes needed. At what point are cell phones considered flash card readers or usb mass storage? Or are they just cellphones? I hope there is a standard connection for cellphone to pc. Usb2/firewire/or-whatever-other-connection can complicate things.

Posted by lestoil: I hope there is a standard connection for cellphone to pc.
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I think that Bluetooth is becoming the standard, primarily because mobile phone manufacturers haven't standardized on a hard-wire connector. At the PC end of any phone-to-PC cable there is the USB plug but at the phone end there is an assortment of different plugs/sockets. So if you change your phone, you may have do change your connector and these work out as or more expensive than a dongle. A dongle usualy works with pretty much any Bluetooth-enabled phone so I can see Bluetooth becoming the de-facto standard pretty soon.

Bluetooth is a new (not really, new in that most people are only just finding it) standard that is designed to replace hard wires. That means its great for stuff like this, it's a very stable connection and it's got pretty reasonable bandwidth.

kde-bluetooth is a good system if you like that sort of thing. If your distro has FUSE set up or if you feel like doing it yourself, obexfs is quite good. Just mount your phone and away you go.

The site is http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/, just one extension off. This one covers some of the stuff about util's n' such. Good luck.

Thanx mikieboy and tux for info.