GUI/Simple way to disconnect Bluetooth services

[Quim Gil]

Apparently the curent behaviour is to have the bluetooth services open if there is bluetooth hardware detected. While this makes sense, it is alos sensible that the user wants to deactivate the bluetooth mechanism i.e...

- The user has bought a PC with bluetooth but not yet devices to connect with.

- In a laptop, the user wants to deactivate Bluetooth in order to save battery.

An average user won't find the way to disconnect it. At least I can't. If Dapper targets normal users and new computer sold use to ship Bluetooth for extra 10€ or so, we have a problem here...

(And what's more annoying, in the meantime I've got this blue light blinking next to My Dell Inspiron 630m keyboard, which is quite distracting)

((I tried installing the optional package gnome-bluetooth, but thinking again in the averagu user it's not a friendly tool and couldn't find either a way to disconnect the service))

Thank you for your work.

[Onkar Shinde (onkarshinde)]

Currently in Edgy, you can disable bluetooth services from ususal services configuration dialog (System->Administration->Services).
But this can be done only by sudoer or root. (satisfies use case 1 partially)

I am not sure letting average user disable a service is a good idea.

AFAIK, even in Windows there is no way for average user to disable the bluetooth services. (Not that I am comparing Ubuntu to Windows).

The closest possible thing (for average user) is using hardware switch on some laptops. Such switches mostly work on Ubuntu also. (satisfies use case 2)

If this is possible at all, it will be considered for edgy+1

[Quim Gil (qgil)]

I saw the improvement in Edgy and, yes, they fulfill the basic needs that made me post this feature request months ago.

When I mentioned "the average user" I took in account a user with sudo priviledges. Administrating the Bluetooth service should be as simple as operate i.e. the wireless connection, and the new interface kind of grants this.

OT: I'm looking forward to the progress made by the new bluetooth team, by Edgy+1 my laptop and my Nokia 770 should feel love at first sight. :)

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Thanks for following up. I'm closing the bug. For the remaining issues, I think it'd be better to have specifications about this instead. It needs more careful planning than a 'bug report' can usually deal with. If you disagree, please reopen the bug.