Bluetooth USB dongle with Linux; which ones work?

[Timothy Murphy]

Rob wrote:

> I have a desktop PC without a build-in bluetooth device. Thus I need to
> buy a USB dongle for exchanging data over bluetooth with my mobile
> phone. Most (low-cost) USB dongles that I find on the web have the
> specifications for the OS to be some flavor of Windows.
> 
> Hence, I'm suspicious whether I have to be very careful which USB
> dongle to buy; or is bluetooth over USB nowadays at a level that pretty
> much every dongle is supported in Linux?

I'd say almost every USB Bluetooth dongle will work with bluez;
but you might have to download firmware to get some working.

Any Bluetooth dongle with a CSR (Cambridge Silicon Research) chip
will work out of the box.
I think most cheap dongles use this chip.
I bought one from China for $5 with a CSR chip
which worked fine until it fell apart.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland