One of the main 3rd party packages for KDE is the KDEBluetooth suite. It is the graphical interface to Bluetooth for KDE. The KDE 4 port was now released in a first test version.
Managing Bluetooth on Linux is actually pretty easy – bluez, the Open Source bluetooth stack is certified by the Bluetooth group itself and is therefore fully supported. However, bluez needs a GUI to be used by users. For KDE, KDEBluetooth delivered a well working solution for years.
With the release of KDE 4 the KDE 3.5 version of KDEBluetooth can of course be used, but a KDE 4 suite would be better integrated. The porting efforts took some time, but now the first version is there: KDEBluetooth4, version 0.1 (also see the project page at kde-apps.org).
While I currently have a KDE 4.1Beta running, that machine does not have bluetooth, so I can’t test it myself right now. However, the release notes on kde-apps.org list the features (and has screenshots), but also the yet missing points. And indeed almost all basic functions are already implemented:
- Trayicon to manage all functions
- Passkey and Authorization Agent to handle requests from remote devices
- Bluetooth Adapter configuration
- Bluetooth Device-Manager
- Bluetooth Device Wizard, to add new Devices
- KBlueLock, to lock your screen, when your mobile phone is out of scope
- Send Files to remote devices (obex-data-server)
Quite nice for a first test release! However, currently the kio-browsing is still missing. Also, support for requesting capability information (for example if it is an audio device or a pointer device) are missing as well as support for audio devices. From my point of view the most hurting point is that there is currently an obex-data server missing so that files cannot be received. But that is only a matter of time.
In case you run a recent KDE 4svn version, give it a test! As usually the developers welcome any kind of (polite) feedback and of course any help development wise.
