Librem 14 - no bluetooth

[chewbaka]

Hi everyone when I enter settings and go to bluetooth I cannot turn it off or on

Librem 14
PuresOS 10 byzantium
Lastest update : Yes
Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter

Output of lspci -knn | grep Net -A2; lsus

(rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1802 802.11abgn Adapter [1028:0300]
Kernel driver in use: ath9k
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 05e3:0749 Genesys Logic, Inc. SD Card Reader and Writer
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:c539 Logitech, Inc. USB Receiver
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 1038:1614 SteelSeries ApS SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0cf3:e006 Qualcomm Atheros Communications Dell Wireless 1802 Bluetooth 4.0 LE
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

output of lsusb:

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 05e3:0749 Genesys Logic, Inc. SD Card Reader and Writer
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:c539 Logitech, Inc. USB Receiver
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 1038:1614 SteelSeries ApS SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0cf3:e006 Qualcomm Atheros Communications Dell Wireless 1802 Bluetooth 4.0 LE
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

can you help me fix this issue

thank you all in advance

[m4lvin]

PureOS itself does not support bluetooth because there is no completely free firmware for it.

Because PureOS 10 byzantium is based on Debian bullseye, you can download the relevant non-free pacakges from there if you want:

https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/all/bluez-firmware/download

https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/all/firmware-atheros/download

Then you can use a GUI or sudo dpkg -i packageName.deb to install them.

Finally, a reboot might be necessary to get bluetooth working.

[chewbaka]

Thank you so much! now it’s working

[surette]

Has anybody tried this with Apple airpods? I’ve installed the non-free packages listed here but I still can’t connect. My airpods pop up in the devices list but when I try to connect it just spins trying to connect and then gives up.

[kondor]

I experience the same issue with a different set of wireless earbuds on Librem and other GNU\Linux platforms. Does anyone have a solution yet?

[Thermos]

What are the differences in the two packages linked here? I had installed the first for a while, but had some issues with playback to a Bluetooth speaker, so I uninstalled it and installed the second one and am seeing an improvement so far. Any insight here? I’m also having trouble with playback on my Librem 5 and wondering if there’s a similar fix there.

EDIT: after rebooting, Bluetooth stopped working. I now understand what is described what is described in this post: Librem 14 - no bluetooth. The packages provide support for specific chips. In my case, prior to reboot, the removed driver was still being used and on reboot, it was gone. As for the “improvement”? Idk, probably just happenstance.

[m4lvin]

The two packages are not alternatives for each other. They provide different things. Now that I looked at the package descriptions (see https://packages.debian.org/bluez-firmware and https://packages.debian/firmware-atheros, also for newer versions in bullseyey-backports) it seems that bluez-firmware is actually only useful for Broadcom and RaspberryPi chips, so that might not be on a Librem 14.

The firmware-atheros package is made specifically for Atheros chips, one of which is the wifi+bluetooth card in the Librem 14. The exact card might vary per model, but I also have a AR9462 from Qualcomm Atheros according to sudo lshw.

Maybe later I will test if removing bluez-firmware does not break things, then I will update my solution post above accordingly.

[Thermos]

What is the backports package? Looks like a new version packaged for stable, but I don’t know why the package for stable itself isn’t just updated…?

EDIT: Basically I’m wondering what I can expect if I decided to install and test the (seemingly) newer version of the driver in the backports package.