Librem 13 / Bluetooth - last kernel update broke some functionality

I’m using the internal Librem 13 bluetooth adapter with the according firmware from the non-free Debian package with cherry mw8 advanced mouse, sabaj a2 amp, smartphones and a sennheiser MB660 headset.

Since the last kernel update to 4.19.118-2 the headset stopped working for me and I didn’t care a lot, because I just didn’t use it much.

Now I needed to use the headset again and fixed the problem by installing kernel 4.19.132-1 of the debian repos. In the debian changelog for their actual kernel there is a regression for ath9k mentioned.

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Thanks for sharing! Good to know.

Well, it worked for the headset, but I had afterwards problems after waking up from suspend to ram. The notebook became unusable because once one CPU got stuck and another time some modules of the bluetooth stack generated a load of 6-8 and I wasn’t able to unload them.

To not go back to none working headset (PureOS kernel) or everything working (PureOS kernel version before actual version) I thought I’d move on to linux-image-5.7.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 5.7.10-1~bpo10+1 from the Debian Backport repo.

So far didn’t suspend the notebook, but the headset is working in A2DP (high fidelity) mode.

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O.k. until now it didn’t crash again after several nights being suspended. This problem seems to be solved in kernel 5.7 .

But I found that the headset didn’t work in headset mode with the microphone enabled.

To find out whether this is a problem with the build-in Bluetooth I got me an Asus BT400 usb bluetooth (which needs closed source software which had to be installed manually - no recommendation from my side).

With the usb bluetooth the headset seems to work in headset mode and listening to music using A2DP works also.

I still have to try the headset mode in real conversation.

Just doing so. Quality is bad and the connection had been lost after about 10 minutes.

I reconnected the headset using an external bluetooth dongle. Sound is way better and so far no disconnects within the same time frame.

Internal Bluetooth, PureOS amber kernel 4.19.0-12-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.152-1, firmware from Debian repos, Sennheiser MB660: A2DP works, HSP/HFP works with bad sound and unexpected disconnects - in my opinion unusable.