Users need to update to UPower 0.99.7 and BlueZ 5.48

Dec 18, 2017 18:12 GMT  ·  By

GNOME/Red Hat developer Bastien Nocera reports on the latest Bluetooth improvements that he and his team managed to implement for GNU/Linux distributions lately.

First off, for the ShanWan PS3 joypad (a PlayStation 3 controller clone), they managed to disable the rumble motor that currently starts immediately after you plug the controller into the USB port of your Linux computer, as well as to hard-code the HID service that the joypad was supposed to offer but it didn't because it's not Bluetooth compliant.

"The SHANWAN PS3 clone joypad will start its rumble motors as soon as it is plugged in via USB. As the additional USB interrupt does nothing on the original PS3 Sixaxis joypads, and makes a number of other clone joypads actually start sending data, disable that call for the SHANWAN so the rumble motors aren't started on plug," reads the kernel patch.

Bluetooth LE battery reporting, GNOME Bluetooth improvments

Among other Bluetooth improvements, the developer reports that he managed to add support for the standardised method offered by Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) for devices to export battery status information in BlueZ, the official Linux Bluetooth stack, which can be implemented at desktop level through the UPower utility. This will add better support for some Bluetooth LE/4 joypads.

Lastly, the developer and his team managed to improve the GNOME Bluetooth component of the GNOME desktop environment to use GDBusObjectManager in the Settings panel and the GNOME Shell user interface, to make it more sensitive when connecting or disconnecting various Bluetooth adapters, as well as when the Airplane mode is used.

These Bluetooth improvements will soon land in the software repositories of your GNU/Linux distribution if you update the BlueZ and UPower packages to versions 5.48 and 0.99.7. Fedora Linux and Arch Linux users can already install UPower 0.99.7, and BlueZ 5.48 is coming soon as well. As for GNOME Bluetooth, the improvements should land as part of the upcoming GNOME 3.28 desktop environment next year in March.