8 Useful Bluetooth Tools for Linux

The Bluetooth wireless technology is a standard for a small-form factor, low-cost radio solution that provides links between mobile computers, mobile phones, other portable handheld devices, and connectivity to the Internet.

In Linux, the official implementation of the Bluetooth protocol stack is BlueZ. It consists of many modules:

• Bluetooth kernel subsystem core.
• L2CAP and SCO audio kernel layers.
• RFCOMM, BNEP, CMTP and HIDP kernel implementations.
• HCI UART, USB, PCMCIA and virtual device drivers.
• General Bluetooth and SDP libraries and daemons.
• Configuration and testing utilities.
• Protocol decoding and analysis tools.

There are many other useful Bluetooth tools available for Linux. This article showcases our favorites.

Let’s explore the Bluetooth tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.

Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.