The KDE Bluetooth Framework is a set of tools built on top of Linux’ Bluetooth stack BlueZ. It provides easy access to the most common Bluetooth actions. The first beta of the upcoming 1.0 version is available for testing. My Take: I had a quick look and I was positively surprised by the level of depth and abilities offered in this beta (notification icon & daemon, action’s kio addons, kcontrol pref panels, konqueror registered protocol, other utils). However, much work remains to be done in the usability department, as it’s pretty complicated to do anything more than send a file to another Bluetooth device (many of the related dialogs are scattered in many places and they feel disconnected).
KDE-Bluetooth 1.0-beta1 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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Been following the KDE bluetooth stuff for a while. I agree.. it’s a great piece of technology, but needs a cleanup. Hopefully it does get cleaned up and put in KDE 4
I am impressed of the amount of work and detail it has been put into this. But before I call it ‘really usable’, it should be simplificed, because now things are scattered all over the place and the user is required to actually understand how Bluetooth works underneath before he/she can do anything useful with it.
I would like to see a wizard-like dialog (found on the KDE menu) that asks the user what kind of service wants to receive or serve (GPRS dialing being one of the most important ones, or access a Bluetooth access point, or print to a BT printer). Then, it will be really useful for anything more than the “obex” file transfer which is the only service truly easy to deal with right now.
I’ve been using it for a few versions now, and I’ve been very impressed so far. I can happily send and receive files to my phone, and synchronise via KitchenSync (although recurring appointments are eluding me).
I tried this in Windows at first, and a certain amount of hoop-jumping was required – drivers to be installed, and phone-specific software. After all that Explorer locks up if I go near “My Bluetooth Shared Folder” or whatever it’s called, and the syncing software has completely and totally failed to work, and refuses to present me with any options or explanation.
Meanwhile kdebluetooth is working fine; it is a little fragmented, but I don’t find it overly hard to deal with.
IIRC SUSE 9.2 already shipped with KDE-Bluetooth included and upcoming 9.3 will be not different then.
for once I can agree with the clutter and usability problems that people continually bring up with respect to KDE. That UI looks quite confusing.
But hey, the important thing is that it works. The cleanup comes later. That is and always has been the KDE way. Get the cool features out there, and then think about how to polish them to a point where everyone can use them.
After having everything break in windows SP2 with regards to bluetooth, I was extrimely surprised by how well kbluetooth works. Great suite!
i’ve been getting by on OBEX, using the Gnome bluetooth bits (http://usefulinc.com/software/gnome-bluetooth) from within xfce4 – i’m rather pleased with the simplicity of it all, but i only really ever need/want/use OBEX, not much of the rest of bluetooth
Yeah, obex is useful, however, I need GPRS dialing most of all and support for connecting to a BT access point for internet connection.
I whould like to see better BT-Headset support, but thats more an ALSA than a KDE problem…
The headset thing shouldn’t be that hard – the underlying BlueZ drivers support it. It’s possible to use a BT headset under Linux on the Zaurus the code from here: http://externe.net/zaurus/bluetooth-audio-sco/
(in a limited way – only 8KHz works)
So doing it from the desktop shouldn’t be to hard….
As you point out already KDE Bluetooth is meant to be a framework and a set of tools in the first place (Think of it as an extension to kdialog). So it mostly delivers excellent building blocks that you can use to create your own userfriendly tailored bluetooth solution.
> I need GPRS dialing most of all and support
> for connecting to a BT access point for
> internet connection.
Creating a script for this purpose using kde bluetooth is a breeze.
OUTPUT=$(kbtsearch -u PPP)
ADDRESS=$(echo $OUTPUT | cut -c1-17)
CHANNEL=$(echo $OUTPUT | cut -c19-19)
with proper permissions set, do:
rfcomm release all
rfcomm bind 0 $ADDRESS $CHANNEL
rfcomm show
gives you a nice userfriendly dialog. After that you just start kppp with your prepared modem- and connection settings, e.g.:
kppp -q -c gprs -m bluegprs
There are several other well-documented tools available with kdebluetooth: kbtserialchat, kbthandsfree, kbtobexclient, khciconfig. And these _are_ already quite user friendly. It just needs people now to put these bricks together 🙂
I agree though that it would really be nice if kdebluetooth would include more prebuilt complete solutions (such as those seen in the screenshot you posted).
On the other hand these days bluetooth solutions are very very specific and tied to the devices. So usually you have to create special scripts for the purpose you are aiming for. And this is where kde bluetooth shines!
>Creating a script for this purpose (gprs) using kde bluetooth is a breeze.
Sorry, but this is way less than a “breeze”.
I would prefer a GUI to easily configure all that easily. I mean, I don’t expect normal users to even understand that script.
> Sorry, but this is way less than a “breeze”.
> I would prefer a GUI to easily configure all
> that easily.
With the KDE Bluetooth framework stable quite soon I’m very sure that there will be developed further “real” bluetooth applications quickly afterwards.
> I mean, I don’t expect normal users to even
> understand that script.
Of course neither do I. The point I tried to make is that
right now KDE Bluetooth delivers an excellent framework
for developers to create userfriendly Bluetooth applications easily.
Yes, it’s true that it also ships with some excellent
applications which are directly targeted at the
common user, and of course I agree with you that hopefully there will be appearing more applications which make use of the KDE bluetooth framework soon.
daemon, action’s kio addons, kcontrol pref panels What’s that all mean??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28computer_software%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIO
…
kde is cool!