January 8, 2026

Bluetooth and linux

My Fedora 42 system already had "BlueZ" installed (the linux bluetooth stack), so when I plugged in my UB500 usb to bluetooth dongle, it "just worked". At least that part of it did. Doing device setup and pairing is yet another thing, as is software development. And ..... Note that "HCI" is Bluetooth "Host Controller Interface" and these are the packets you will be looking at.

Dealing with the BlueZ stack involves using D-bus, which probably stands for "desktop bus". It is a Fedora invented interprocess communication scheme invented by Fedora.

The python code I have that talks to bluetooth uses GLib, which I found surprising since there is no Gtk GUI involved. It uses GLib for the ability to handle events, which is still somewhat surprising, but perhaps it is necessary or at least a simple way to get things done.


Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

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