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I have a bluetooth adapter that worked fine on win 10. But I cannot enable it on fresh installed PopOS. It's just always off.

Model https://ks-is.com/adaptery-i-perehodniki/usb-bluetooth-5-0-adapter-ks-is-ks-457

systemctl status bluetooth shows active status

lsusb results

Bus 003 Device 005: ID 0bda:8771 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bluetooth Radio

❯ rfkill ID TYPE DEVICE SOFT HARD 4 bluetooth hci0 unblocked unblocked ❯ hcitool dev Devices: ❯ hciconfig -a hci0: Type: Primary Bus: USB BD Address: 00:00:00:00:00:00 ACL MTU: 0:0 SCO MTU: 0:0 DOWN RX bytes:21 acl:0 sco:0 events:2 errors:0 TX bytes:6 acl:0 sco:0 commands:2 errors:0 Features: 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 0x00 Packet type: DM1 DH1 HV1 Link policy: Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT

What's written in official docs about linux

KS-is KS-457 Bluetooth 5.0 USB Adapter

Requirements to install and use this model under Linux

It is identified by lsusb as 0bda: 8771 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

Linux support

a. The adapter is supported by bt_trl (CONFIG_BT_RTL, starting with Linux 5.8. Firmware is required for the driver. Firmware is available in the linux-formware package starting April 2020.

b. You will need to upgrade your kernel to version 5.8+ if you have an older kernel and want to use this adapter.

c. The recommended version is Linux 5.8.1

AUR package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rtl8761b-fw/

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  • So did you install that firmware ? and verified your kernel version (just run uname -r) Commented Aug 15, 2021 at 14:19
  • ❯ uname -r 5.11.0-7620-generic Commented Aug 15, 2021 at 14:48
  • I didn't install this AUR package, as I thought it's related to arch distros, and also that link is broken. Commented Aug 15, 2021 at 14:49
  • You may try getting config and fw files from RT open source repository. See github.com/Realtek-OpenSource/android_hardware_realtek (you need to rename both files to .bin) Commented Oct 11, 2021 at 7:56

3 Answers 3

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It will work out-of-box with Linux kernel v5.19+.

Driver

I've submitted a patch to upstream (merged in mainline) for these adapters. Without it, the adapters work very unreliably, at least with newer drivers/firmware, among other things they show pairing issues, specially with BLE devices.

Firmware

Generally there's no need to download random third-party files. The required blobs are included in the linux-firmware project, you can download it there as a last resort.

However, the best method is to install it from your distro.

Package name by distro:

Distro Package
Alpine linux-firmware-rtl_bt
Arch linux-firmware
Debian firmware-realtek
Fedora linux-firmware
Gentoo linux-firmware
openSUSE kernel-firmware-realtek
Slackware kernel-firmware
Source Mage linux-firmware
Void Linux linux-firmware

These packages are generally kept up to date, but not always, so check the version is recent, and if it doesn't include it, don't forget to let the maintainer of the package know.

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1

Indeed since PopOs appears to be based on Ubuntu you correctly inferred that the AUR package does not apply here, it is for Arch Linux and derived distributions. The manufacturer page you linked to provides a RAR file for Linux. That archive contains a Word document that doesn't say much, and the other file is the driver.

So based on consulted articles the solution could be as "simple" as this:

  • uncompress the RAR file and copy the driver to /usr/lib/firmware/rtl_bt on your computer
  • also add the .bin extension so the file is named rtl8761b_fw.bin

I suggest that after installing the driver you run this command:

sudo dmesg -w | grep - i bluetooth

then unplug the device and plug it again and see from the ouput of dmesg if it can locate the driver this time.

Reference: How to install unsupported Bluetooth 5.0 Dongle on Linux

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0

Solved it by installing this firmware

https://linuxreviews.org/Realtek_RTL8761B

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