Ubuntu – Microsoft Designer Mouse (Bluetooth 4.0) on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

14.04bluetoothmicrosoft-mouse

I just bought a Microsoft Designer Mouse, specs here, (Bluetooth 4.0) and am not able to use it in Ubuntu 14.04. On the Windows 8 (same laptop computer) it works just fine.

So I've searched arround and found many people with the same issue. Apparantly the issue is that ubuntu 14.04 only has BlueZ 4.101 as of now, and it would take BlueZ 5.x to support Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Device, which seems to be hard to install. There's a thread running from April 2013 to recently on the issue, stating that it's hard to incorporate Bluez 5.x on Ubuntu.

Some people gave some non working suggestions, including the installation of a PPA that lead to me having to reainstall ubuntu (bluetooth wouldn't turn on and ubuntu would hang indefinitly on shutdown):

So isn't there a solution at all? I can't use Bluetooth 4.0 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, although the hardware supports it?
Is there another Linux distribution that would support Bluetooth 4.0 (Like Mint or someother)?

No one said explicitly that there isn't a solution, probably because there are stuff a very experienced user could do according to his own case.

Seems like a thumbs down for ubuntu.

Thx in advance.

Best Answer

I got the Microsoft Designer Mouse working on Ubuntu 14.04 with the following PPAs and package installs:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:vidplace7/bluez5
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:blueman/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bluez
sudo apt-get install blueman

Then you need to restart blueman just incase.

killall blueman-manager
blueman-applet &
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