Implementing Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast on Linux Systems
collabora.com

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147 points

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losgehts

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7 days ago

16 comments

xzjis ・ 3 days ago

I commend Collabora's tremendous work on Bluetooth LE audio on Linux and their work in general, but I can't help being frustrated that it's volunteer contributors handling the implementation, while the Bluetooth Special Interest Group makes a ton of profit by licensing Bluetooth yet contributes nothing to implementing the standard on Linux. It's really typical of the "open source" spirit: volunteers are exploited, and the fruits of their labor are harvested as profit.

  • lunar-whitey ・ 3 days ago

    It would help if BlueZ had any hope of being commercially relevant. The Linux Wi-Fi stack, in contrast, is quite usable.

    • ocrete ・ 3 days ago

      You'd be surprised who many products ship with BlueZ, it's everywhere in all kinds of embedded systems, much like the Linux Wi-Fi stack.

      • lunar-whitey ・ 3 days ago
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        If BlueZ was compelling enough, Android would tolerate it for the same reasons it tolerates the kernel. Nobody really wants to be in the business of writing a BT stack, and yet Android has replaced theirs at least twice. I ask, why?

charcircuit ・ 3 days ago

>On Linux, LE Audio support is implemented through BlueZ for the Bluetooth® host stack and PipeWire for audio routing.

Most Linux systems support Bluetooth LEA via Gabeldorsche. Google shipped LEA support in Android 14 and BSP providers offered the drivers needed for it in their Android 14 BSPs.

  • ocrete ・ 3 days ago

    This Gabeldorsche is really only for Android. BlueZ is used almost everywhere else.

    • charcircuit ・ 3 days ago

      Most Linux installs that use Bluetooth with Linux are Android installs.

      • estimator7292 ・ 3 days ago
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        Apart from basically every laptop sold in the last 20 years, yeah

        • ocrete ・ 3 days ago
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          Android is really its own platform that happens to use the Linux kernel as a shortcut.

          What we're talking about here is really what used to be called GNU/Linux, so the whole platform that is based on the software developed by the various communities.

          • preisschild ・ 3 days ago
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            I think this is needless gatekeeping. Does it matter if someone uses KDE or GNOME? Systemd or openrc? Musl or glibc? They are all part of the Linux community.

            I use GrapheneOS for my smartphone and Fedora for my workstation and I consider both to be linux distributions

        • charcircuit ・ 2 days ago

          Most Linux laptops are Chromebooks which ship with Android's previous Bluetooth stack (still not BlueZ).

ensocode ・ 3 days ago

This is a big pain point for wireless headsets. Thanks for the post and linux overview of the progress.

unwind ・ 3 days ago

This:

If you've ever wondered why your music quality drops dramatically when you answer a call on your Bluetooth® headset, you've experienced one of A2DP's key limitations firsthand.

Made me feel old ... how are people listening to music while taking a call?