What model? I was shipped an Oryx Pro for work and it's given me exactly zero problems in 11 months. I've got a wireless USB mouse, wireless USB keyboard, USB smart card reader plugged in through a hub, and an external monitor connected via HDMI in extend the screen mode. Even with an NVIDIA discrete GPU, every single thing has worked plug and play on the first try. I use a bluetooth headset for all meetings and it also works perfectly fine, paired in exactly the same way as it does on any other platform. The Linux bluez stack definitely supports headphones.
Ironically, the only gotcha moment I have ever had was when plugging my iPhone in to charge it, I kept noticing my network connection would get wonky, and I eventually realized Apple puts code injection into its USB cables that include a setting to automatically tether a device an iPhone get plugged into to use Ethernet over USB, so I was being disconnected from my WiFi access point and then being tethered through the iPhone back to the same WiFi access point, except mediated through the iPhone as a relay. Yet another user-hostile, annoying on by default Apple setting I had to discover by accident and then turn off.
I've had the opposite experience; I've used the same Bluetooth headphones, mouse, and keyboard with two work machines (a MacBook and a Linux tower) and my personal Windows machine.
Windows is rock-solid, just works with no problems.
Linux works mostly fine, with occasional audio stuttering issues that go away after a few seconds.
The MacBook is an unusable nightmare. If I ever try to use a mic or webcam of any sort while the headphones are connected, the whole Bluetooth stack immediately crashes and doesn't recover for at least an entire minute, usually more like 2-3 minutes. Also, sometimes this happens just randomly anyways with no discernable pattern or cause. Also, sometimes the Bluetooth stack forgets my keyboard exists, and I have to walk back through the pairing process again (this happens 1-3 times per month). Then there are times when it randomly shuffles scroll speed on my mouse.
If it weren't so frustrating how unusable the macOS Bluetooth stack is, it would be almost funny in a "hidden-camera-prank-show" sort of way.
I've switched to working full-time on my Linux tower (also provided by my employer) and it's been a tremendous quality of life improvement. On the rare occasions that I have issues, I can usually get to the bottom of the problem and fix it. With the MacBook, I'm lucky if I get "Something went wrong :(", and all the voodoo remedies I've seen online haven't helped.
I recently came over to "Apple"-world after years of listening to all the fanatics/ambassadeurs who proclaims "it just works". I've been using an Apple AIO computer (model Imac 5k) for a couple of years as a web browser, but recently I started the switch from Android eco system and first I bought the "pro" model of their wireless headset just to find out that they worked pretty decently (albeit, overly expensive) as bluetooth headset even to my Sony phone, then I bought the their mobile phone ("12 pro") and also their smartwatch ("series 6").
After I switched from Android I did a reset to my headset and paired it with all my Apple devices. Success rate of switching sound between computer, phone and watch against the headset varies alot. Sometimes it just works but almost half of the times I have to fiddle with sound output in computer to select the "airpods pro" or in the phone to select the bluetooth headset.
Not to mention that even directly in the phone I had troubles to answer in Hangouts with sound output/input redirected to the headset, even though it says "Airpods pro" beneath the bluetooth symbol to show it is actively connected to de device. Also in the computer there are several occassions where the "wheel" is spinning, in the attempt to connect to the headset.
This thing "it just works" feels like a fraud to me, I can't remember since Android 2.x (I never had the 3.x, only 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 8.x, 9.x and 10.x) that I had sound/connection issues like this.
Although I have not had a bluetooth headset linked between my Linux computers and Android phones, I have shared multipoint bluetooth headsets between two different android phones and switched over without these kind of obstacles I now have.
BT is just a disaster everywhere. My experience is that for "normal" use cases (input devices & headphone audio, basically) Linux is no worse than anywhere else, but still bad. Apple users think it's great because Apple made AirPods work, but that's a testament to Apple's integration engineering and not the underlying technology.
> Plugging in a new display doesn't immediately work
I haven't seen this with Intel drivers on a major distro in a long time. But yes, the driver story for other hardware remains somewhat weak. And obviously the farther you get from "Gnome on Ubuntu/Fedora" into the weeds of desktop choices, the weirder the feature set is going to get.
> A USB microphone fails to register as an input sound device
No idea here. I haven't seen a USB audio failure in a LONG time (closest I can think of is a Razer headset that has two chat/game output streams and Linux sees only one by default). Mostly likely you had a broken piece of hardware that worked in windows only by installing its own driver. And that sucks, but poor standards compliance is just something we all live with.
I used a 15gbp bluetooth headphone 6 years ago without any problems on both linux and android; battery life was fine, even sound quality was acceptable. Colleagues have been using Bose ones for years. Apple didn't fix anything.
Really? I tried the first M1 Mac Minis, and bluetooth was terrible -- macOS would constantly switch to the worst quality profile. I use an iPhone on a daily basis, and I always with its bluetooth was as reliable as my Linux laptop.
What exactly did you find lacking in the Linux world? Are you an audio professional?
> Again, all my bluetooth headphones work fine on my Mac, but on some (not all) of my Linux computers it sometimes work and sometimes doesn't.
The issue I'm currently dealing with is that my Bluetooth ZMK keyboard works flawlessly on Linux but won't pair with a Mac. I guess devices are nuanced.
Do you have other non-Apple devices with which you encounter pairing difficulties?
My experience with Bluetooth headphones was that on an iPhone they were occasionally annoying, while on Linux they were quite poor and on Windows they were more like a practical joke. This would have been like 4-5 years ago though, maybe all the stacks have been improved.
The overall experience is fantastic. It ends up being little edge-case things that have weird behavior.
For me; my Razer Nari wireless headphones just don't work. They're not bluetooth; they have their own low-latency USB receiver, and thus their own Razer-supplied drivers, which are not available on Linux. There's been some effort toward getting Razer products working better in Linux, but (last I ran Ubuntu, a few months ago) their headphones are not there yet.
You just have to try it out and see what works, see what doesn't. Chances are, it'll work fantastically for you.
How did Bluetooth turn out for ya? I installed the OS on a ROG Zephyrus (Windows gaming laptop) and everything works beautifully (even WiFi) except for Bluetooth. It simply stopped working after a while.
Haven't had any Bluetooth issues in the better part of a decade on any laptop running Linux, and I've been using Bluetooth headphones as my main audio output for the majority of that time, so I'd think I would have.
FWIW, I've found outside of the apple ecosystem that Bluetooth just works. Everything supports pairing to multiple devices. I have a M1 MBP that I sometimes use non-apple Bluetooth headphones with and I can't say it is any different than android or windows.
You will get problems if you buy no-name things from Amazon, but you always get problems when you buy anything no-name off of Amazon.
You will also get problems if you use Linux of course (even with good headphones), but that obviously goes without saying. Yes yes I am sure you can get Bluetooth to work reliably in Linux by just recompiling the kernel and change your alsa config to use jack to remap your output to yada yada yada... No thanks.
Bluetooth is a god damn mess regardless of OS. Probably (I have not tried, just assuming) the one exception being Apple hardware with Apple OS. Especially audio and keyboard.
Haven't had any issues with Microsoft mice on Linux, though. knocks on wood
I've been using a pair of Bluetooth headsets on Linux since 2018 with zero issues other than the expected ones (A2DP and slight latency). Since then I've used it on my laptop (integrated Bluetooth) and on my desktop (through USB dongles).
It's been some time since I have had issues on Linux. I regularly use headphones, mouse, and keyboard with bluetooth, and just today got a bluetooth Wacom tablet. All of it was just pair and go, and if things turn off and back on, they reconnect, sound gets redirected to the most recently connected thing, etc.
I remember it used to be pretty terrible and would break if you looked at it funny. Those days have gone, for me at least.
Honestly my linux desktop (Ubuntu 22.04) is where I run into the fewest issues regarding my bluetooth headphones. I've never had an issue connecting to them.
> For instance, on my Mac’s built-in bluetooth, my mouse (a Logitech MX Master) displayed noticeable jank—stopping, then jumping, instead of moving smoothly.
Anecdata. On my Mac the MX Master 3 works flawlessly via Bluetooth. However, it has janks when I use it on my recently purchased ThinkPad running Linux.
> Similarly, when connected to Mac bluetooth, my Jabra Evolve 75 headset would frequently have the mic or sound drop. It (mostly) worked fine on its own dongle.
Again, all my bluetooth headphones work fine on my Mac, but on some (not all) of my Linux computers it sometimes work and sometimes doesn't. I don't know if it's Linux or the hardware.
Also, on the aforementioned ThinkPad, when I connect a new device via bluetooth the wifi disconnects and immediately reconnects 40% of the time. Don't know what's up with that.
I've been using Linux long enough to take things like these in its stride :)
(Btw, it was after I was issued a Mac by my employer that I started using Bluetooth devices regularly; before that in Linux it was mouse via IR-usb-thing, wired headphones etc.)
I agree with the general sentiment that wired devices are inherently more reliable. But I don't know if we should collectively move towards wired, or improve the reliability of wireless.
Ironically, the only gotcha moment I have ever had was when plugging my iPhone in to charge it, I kept noticing my network connection would get wonky, and I eventually realized Apple puts code injection into its USB cables that include a setting to automatically tether a device an iPhone get plugged into to use Ethernet over USB, so I was being disconnected from my WiFi access point and then being tethered through the iPhone back to the same WiFi access point, except mediated through the iPhone as a relay. Yet another user-hostile, annoying on by default Apple setting I had to discover by accident and then turn off.
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