Reason Linux still isn’t ready for the desktop….
I have three computers on my desk at work. My MBP that would be considered my main machine and the one that goes back and forth between home and work everyday. A Windows 7 laptop, which is pretty much used for single purpose now. I also have a linux dev box that is running Red Hat. (RHEL5) When our security masters decided that Bluetooth wasn’t evil earlier this year, I started using my Bluetooth headphones connected to my MBP. Normally I’d paired them with my iPhone, but now that ALL my music is in the cloud (Amazon Cloud Player Rocks!) and I’ve found several excellent internet radio stations, the MBP is a better source. Getting the headphones paired took about 5 minutes, not super easy, but doable.
The only problem is that I had to keep restarting things when I’d ‘dock’ my MBP in the morning and this annoyed me. I also sometimes watch the live stream of TWiT and it was nice to put that up on my linux desktop (which has a big screen) but I have no speakers on my linux desktop. So the first thing I tried to-do was add a Bluetooth dongle thing to the linux desktop. This is impossible, it just can’t be done without recompiling half the libraries on the box.
So enabling on the MBP took five minutes, enabling on linux desktop would never happen. What was my solution? I used the old ‘analog’ workaround. I bought a Bluetooth transmitter, which I plug into the speaker output on the linux box and pair it with my headphones. Getting the device with exactly ONE output bit (a blinky light) and minimal input (one button, which can be pushed quickly or held), it took about 10 minutes to get paired with my headphones.
So now I have my music, internet radio stations or live TWiT running all the time via the linux box.
NOTE: Some of you might be asking why I didn’t use the Windows 7 box? I really just hate touching it, except when I have to for this weekly report I have to generate. It works OK and I used it for about 9 months before going back to the Mac. But it just makes things difficult. I don’t know why, but I have to authenticate to the network every time I look at it funny. About one out of three times I try to save something to Sharepoint, it fails and has to re-try. (And re-authenticate me again) Switching between IE and Word will sometimes require it to think for a couple minutes. Ugh….