
Making Bluetooth Work on Lenovo X1 Carbon 6th Gen with Linux - preek
https://200ok.ch/posts/2018-12-17_making_bluetooth_work_on_lenovo_x1_carbon_6th_gen_with_linux.html
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saagarjha
It’s kind of sad that getting things to work on Linux almost invariably ends
up requiring taking magical incantations from a dozen different sources in the
hopes that it will fix your problem.

~~~
Santosh83
When something breaks on Windows, the situation is no different and in fact
possibly worse. Since it is proprietary, you have far fewer people who really
know the innermost guts of the system and can help. Microsoft's own forums are
practically useless for non-paying 'users.' As for the rest of the Internet,
it is the same as Linux:

"Run this command and tell me the output"

"Run this script as admin/root"

"Go into these folders and delete these files"

"Add these lines to these files (Linux)/Registry (Windows)"

and of course the famous:

"Reset/Refresh/Reinstall" catch-all.

The problem is exponential complexity of interactions of various systems,
hardware and software, and almost nobody really seems to know the exact
workings and interactions of the system. At least no one on web forums.

~~~
Agingcoder
Not really - this is a different issue : generic problems vs out of the box
behaviour.

I expect Bluetooth to work out of the box on a Lenovo laptop in 2018, while I
don't expect Linux to work well at all. I've been using linux since 1996, and
things haven't changed : unless hardware makers start supporting it natively,
we'll always have problems.

Now, I may be very wrong on the windows side of things : I expect it to work,
but maybe it doesn't!

~~~
dpau
I just cringed a bit remembering my idealistic but ultimately doomed mission
in the early 2000’s to convert an entire organization to Linux on the desktop,
complete with a test group of forward-thinking, masochistic users who I
encouraged to jump off the cliff with me. In a parallel universe I’m on the
phone with a user at 3am cheerfully explaining how to use pico to edit their
/etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf!

~~~
StudentStuff
Thankfully on this front most of the desktop environments have come a long
way, one can give a user a laptop running Debian or Fedora and that user will
be able to install software right in Gnome Software, change wifi networks,
display resolution/configuration and so forth without ever using their
keyboard.

Its feasible in 2018 to give your aunt a laptop running Linux (just so long as
its not Hannah Montana Linux or Gentoo) and expect her to be able to go about
her normal Facebook browsing, document editing routine without much issue.

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m0zg
Lenovo ought to know better in 2018. I'd understand if their "consumer"
laptops weren't fully compatible, but all Thinkpads should be compatible with
the latest LTS release of Ubuntu (or corresponding Debian) out of the box.

~~~
cat199
and how exactly should lenovo enforce setting default driver options in a
distribution it doesn't control?

~~~
kklimonda
Well, by engaging with the community and perhaps even preparing a patch.
Making changes to the distribution is not exactly arcane knowledge.

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drinchev
I spend 2-3 days around the holidays to revive an old HP laptop with a Debian
desktop distribution. I had problems with hibernation / suspend, but what was
the show stopper for me was that there is still no smooth scrolling on Linux.
[1]

1:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2qd564/why_no_smooth...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2qd564/why_no_smooth_scrolling_on_linux/)

~~~
dmos62
Personally, I wouldn't spend time setting smooth scrolling up, not to mention
implementing it. I doesn't seem to have much impact to my reading. The
scrollable things I use is the browser and a PDF reader. Firefox scrolls
smoothly, while the PDF reader doesn't, but my experience reading with both is
about the same. So I sympathize with devs who put their time into solving
other problems.

I'd be interested in hearing from people who feel the opposite.

~~~
bauerd
Application devs shouldn't have to implement smooth scrolling. The DE should,
and make it toggleable on a per-application basis.

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cmurf
I remember Apple having scads of Bluetooth problems in the first ~5 years, and
then off/on problems for 10 years. These days I pretty much expect it to work.

The problem on Linux with Bluetooth is there's multiple kernel drivers
involved, one or more daemons, and one or more interface tools. Knowing which
component to blame for a bug, is not obvious. Learning about components is
tedious: btmon, btattach, hciattach, hcitool...it just goes on and on.

I've filed bugs about random bluetooth mouse disconnects, and it gets blamed
on some other component where there's no response from maintainers for basic
questions like, how do I get you more information? Things like hcidump will
get you metric f tons of information about the connection, way too verbose
(dozens of lines per second) but zero information about why there's a
disconnect.

And in many bug reports I see maintainers blame hardware, even when the
problem doesn't reproduce on Windows 10.

I'm sure it's quite complicated, but there isn't even a decoder ring for how
to help users file useful bug reports.

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jandrese
The one that got me was trying to pair an ODBII dongle with a the default
Ubuntu bluetooth stack. It's one of the kinds with a fixed PIN you have to use
to pair (1234), but the Bluetooth stack insisted on generating a 6 digit code
and have me somehow punch it in on a device with zero buttons/switches.

It was annoying, but I figured there must be some commandline utility where I
can force the other behavior right? If there is I still have no idea where or
what it is. I found some utilities, but they have among the worst
documentation I've ever seen for a Linux utility. Just a list of the commands
that require options, with no description of the options that I can find no an
explanation of what they do. It was kind of surprising because I've become
accustomed to stuff just kind of working these days. To have something so
broken is a bit shocking.

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zdware
Thanks, I own this same computer, installed Archlinux on it, and while
Bluetooth has always worked ok, this did seem to speed up things.

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roadbeats
I used to be a happy x201 user 11 years ago, but nowadays can’t see any good
reason to prefer it over a good Macbook Pro (2015?). It’s now more hacky to
remove Windows and install Linux in a Thinkpad, compared to setting up a dual
boot Arch + OSX system in a Macbook Pro.

~~~
cyrusmg
MacbookPro 2016 and newer is far from fully supported in Linux and MBP2015 is
huge compared to 2016.

[https://github.com/dunedan/mbp-2016-linux](https://github.com/dunedan/mbp-2016-linux)

~~~
roadbeats
Yes, even new Macbook keyboard is not compatible. That’s why I referred to
2015 and older.

~~~
StudentStuff
So you end up with an overpriced used Macbook Pro 2015 (looking at eBay) that
is comparable to a Thinkpad T440 or W540?

Why would anyone pay 3x to 4x for a device that is a PITA to get most common
Linux distros onto, and is challenging to repair? I don't see the value
provided, even comparing weight and dimensions...

~~~
slow_donkey
I have a t440, the weight of the mbp is not comparable. It's more like a
carbon and there's huge advantage to being able to move easily without a heavy
laptop.

~~~
StudentStuff
Note that OP was referring to a 2015 MBP, before they seriously thinned the
laptop.

