Weird bluetooth behavior KDE xwayland

olividir · February 28, 2023, 10:19pm

This is one of the weirdest bluetooth behavior I have encountered.

Steps how this behaves for me:

I connect the bluetooth headphones to the system (I hear short pop when that happens)
I watch YouTube, Netflix, or listen to radio/streaming service
I take a break from watching, still with my headphones in ear, just pause or do some other work and I don’t play anything for some X minutes
I start playing something again (new video, or something) and there is no sound. Headphones are still connected, I can check status on them, see that they are connected, just no sound being transferred. THINGS ARE NOT ON MUTE (I did check, and double check)!!!
I disconnect and connect headphones and start watching/listening, this time sound works.

This is without a doupt the weirdes behavior I have experienced. I just put up kde instad of gnome. Did not experience this on gnome or any other device.
Headphones are Mii earbuds S2
inxi

System:
  Host: ProX5 Kernel: 6.2.1-arch1-1 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma
    v: 5.27.2 Distro: EndeavourOS
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: SLIMBOOK product: PROX-AMD5 v: Standard
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: SLIMBOOK model: SLIMBOOK v: Standard serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: N.1.06GRU06 date: 05/25/2022
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 48.2 Wh (54.0%) condition: 89.3/91.6 Wh (97.5%)
    volts: 11.4 min: 11.6
CPU:
  Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5700U with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
    type: MT MCP cache: L2: 4 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1450 min/max: 1400/4370 cores: 1: 1800 2: 1400 3: 1400
    4: 1400 5: 1400 6: 1400 7: 1400 8: 1400 9: 1400 10: 1400 11: 1400 12: 1400
    13: 1400 14: 1800 15: 1400 16: 1400
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Lucienne driver: amdgpu v: kernel
  Device-2: Chicony Integrated IR Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
  Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.8
    compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: amdgpu unloaded: modesetting
    dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu resolution: 1920x1080
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: AMD Radeon Graphics (renoir LLVM
    15.0.7 DRM 3.49 6.2.1-arch1-1)
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Renoir Radeon High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: AMD ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor driver: N/A
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound API: ALSA v: k6.2.1-arch1-1 running: yes
  Sound Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.66 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    driver: r8169
  IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: b0:25:aa:4e:4c:5b
  Device-2: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 driver: iwlwifi
  IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 14:85:7f:0a:6e:73
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX200 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 37.47 GiB (8.0%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Crucial model: CT500P2SSD8 size: 465.76 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 464.78 GiB used: 37.39 GiB (8.0%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-2: /home size: 464.78 GiB used: 37.39 GiB (8.0%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-3: /var/log size: 464.78 GiB used: 37.39 GiB (8.0%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
Swap:
  Alert: No swap data was found.
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 46.8 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 43.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 376 Uptime: 4h 31m Memory: 15.01 GiB used: 7.08 GiB (47.2%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.25

anon11595408 · March 1, 2023, 9:35am

This is just guessing from my end:

Did you try using a different kernel yet (e.g. lts)? In the past, there happened to be kernel-regressions with regards to bluetooth, so trying a different kernel might help.

olividir · March 1, 2023, 9:42am

I keep forgetting kernel 6.1 isn’t LTS yet.
I’ll install LTS and check it out.

Edit:
I am wrong, while installing LTS, the kernel number is 6.1.14.

brucehankins · March 1, 2023, 11:35am

I’ve had several issues with bluedevil and weird Bluetooth issues as well. Might want to check KDE Bug reports also to see if there is anything relevant there.

MarkB · March 1, 2023, 5:31pm

I’ve been experiencing this problem, as well as frequent disconnects while using my bluetooth earbuds. I switched from linux ZEN to LTS and for now it seems the problem has been mitigated on my side.

olividir · March 2, 2023, 6:59pm

seem to have the same behavior on LTS kernel. So nothing has changed…

MarkB · March 2, 2023, 7:02pm

Can confirm, after some more testing it seems that after a minute or less of silence the earbuds disconnect if I start playing something. Sometimes they even disconnect while something is playing too which is really annoying

anon92589110 · March 2, 2023, 7:25pm

There is an open bug report regarding this issue with Intel AX20x bluetooth devices which is apparently connected to linux-firmware:

Following the bug log from the link it has been around for quite a while but seems to disappear and to reappear with different linux-firmware versions.

@MarkB Do you have the same hardware?

olividir · March 2, 2023, 7:29pm

Weird, I wonder what is different between gnome and kde regarding this.

I haven’t tried this on xorg, but I rely on swiping gestures, so that is out of the question.

MarkB · March 2, 2023, 7:30pm

I’m having this issue on KDE plasma with X11, so it’s not exclusive to wayland or gnome

anon92589110 · March 2, 2023, 7:34pm

If it really still is that bug and if it is connected to linux-firmware (as suspected), it should be present across all DEs.

So, it would be interesting to know if other people with the same

have the same issue.

olividir · March 2, 2023, 7:36pm

While on gnome, (just about 2 weeks since I changed to kde), I never had this issue. Not even once. My headphones even connected automatically if the computer went to sleep.

anon92589110 · March 2, 2023, 7:40pm

The current version of linux-firmware is 20230210.bf4115c-1
Last updated 2023-02-17 on the arch repo. So that might indeed be the issue here, if you didn’t have it around 2 weeks ago. If you want to elaborate you could downgrade to the previous version of linux-firmware and see if it still happens.

Edit: For downgrading to the previous package version you can use the the Arch Linux Archive with: sudo pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware-20230117.7e4f0ed-1-any.pkg.tar.zst

or you use the package from your pacman cache if you still have it

olividir · March 2, 2023, 7:57pm

I didn’t have it from july last year to until I changed to kde

This is minor issue. just an annoyance. It only takes about 1 sec to disconnect and connect again.

anon92589110 · March 2, 2023, 8:02pm

Well, up to you of course. It might be linked to linux-firmware. That package gets updated about once a month. So, it might solve itself.
If you want to know whether the problem is connected to this package you could do the downgrade. I think it shouldn’t cause any issues and you could just upgrade it again with your next system upgrade.

But I of course can also understand that you don’t want to play around if it doesn’t bother you too much.

MarkB · March 2, 2023, 10:20pm

I installed it, will be testing for a few days to see if it’s fixed and report back

brucehankins · March 3, 2023, 11:29am

I’ve had this issue before, and filed a bug report for it before. As you’ve found, this is a recurring issue with the AX2xx devices. I can confirm it affects both the AX200 and AX210.

anon92589110 · March 6, 2023, 9:16pm

Hey Mark, did you get any results from your testing yet?

MarkB · March 6, 2023, 9:21pm

It still disconnects but it seems to happen less frequently

anon92589110 · March 6, 2023, 9:22pm

Thanks. Let’s hope then that the existing bug reports will lead to a solution in the near future