When was that epic photo taken?

EDIT: did my own research

Jun 18, 2012 3:29 PM

Linus Torvalds Gives Nvidia the Finger. Literally.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds isn't happy with Nvidia. And he wants you to know it.

Late last week, at a hacker meetup in Finland, Torvalds laid into Nvidia, calling it "the single worst company" the Linux developer community has ever dealt with, complaining that the chipmaker doesn't do as much as it could to ensure that its hardware plays nicely with his open source operating system. He even turned to the camera filming the event, flipped the company the proverbial bird, and dropped the proverbial F bomb.

Absolute fucking legend!

Drivers (other than your Bluetooth chipset) generally shouldn't matter. AFAIK Bluetooth audio device protocol is generic.

How are you pairing the headphones? Are you adding your PC as a device using the Sound Connect App? I have different SONY earbuds, but they can pair with 2 different devices and switch between them with the app. Perhaps they still have another device (like a phone) selected for output?

Man, this one is rage inducing. I run up against issues all the time. I am such a sucker for sony' excellent hardware that i always end up fighting their absolute shit software/implementation.

To this day i still plug my wh-mx10004 ... (Or whatever their stupid number is cause sony thinks a ten digit alphanumeric code is the catchiest name for their products....) b/c every time they connect by bt they will ONLY do 'handsfree' codec, yknow, the one that sounds like shit for phone calls. I have done everything... pavucontrol, pipewire, wireplumber, blueman, cli system level shit and yes i can force it to proper high def audio after some really annoying steps... but then ill start up a game or something and it suddenly goes "nope! This calls cor handset audio!" And switches itself back.

Honestly, blue tooth as a protocol is shit, and has never really worked that great but sony always seems to bring out the worst of it.

Yes, the problem is sony. Im sorry for your frustration. For me, in the end, i went w the 3.5 mm jack because i am just so sick of wasting effort on this bs

You dont need to test on different Linux distributions. All that matters is what kernel its running. That is the one that is detecting your headset.

Just so you know for the future. You can actually just install the latest kernel instead of trying different distros.

Did you see this? https://askubuntu.com/questions/1425270/sony-bluetooth-headphones-connecting-but-as-an-unknown-device-with-no-option-t

I have it working on Ubuntu 25.10 and it worked out of the box for me. So I'm not sure if they added the drivers for experimental releases of Ubuntu or I had them unknowingly installed somehow. Therefore, no idea what to tell you other than try Ubuntu 25.10?

I use my WF-1000XM5 on Linux fine, paired normally IIRC. Any reason your set would be different?

Bluetooth headset are quite problematic in Linux due to missing drivers, codecs and/or firmware. As an output device they tend to work but I've never gotten microphone functionality working on my WH-1000XM3.

I have the same model, working in arch (swaywm, pipewire). For me was just connecting by Bluetooth, open pavucontrol and select the driver (high fidelity playback for when listening, headset for online meetings). No problems at all out of the box.

So just try pavucontrol, it allows you to choose the driver and use it as headset

I had Sony CH-WH710n and no major problems.

Try to pair the headphones via bluetoothctl and see if there are any errors in the logs.

Do you dual boot windows? In my case it couldn't pair to both at the same time without extracting the keys.

I would try to see if windows pairs up with the headphones, after all other troubleshooting steps are exhausted.

I feel the pain bro, I have airpods and when I connect them they just follow this connect and disconnect loop. So I can't use them on Linux but with my android device and on windows they work fine.

Try Fedora which mostly have lastest kernel and drivers

Not this headset but another sound device (maybe MS headset) I needed to install pavucontrol, open it and go to playback options and click around, and the device popped up in the DE sound switcher

It's clear this is purely Sony's fault for not caring about or supporting Linux drivers. Are they just ignoring the entire platform at this point?

Yeah dude. Everyone is. It's like <1% of their market. If any consumer electronics work with Linux it's just coincidental.

Try installing Blueman.

My Airpods didn't want to connect, but with blueman they finally did!

Happened to me with another brand and model (can't recall which to be honest). It did pair but appeared as a generic BT device, not headphones, and thus was totally useless.

I was pissed.

Then... I pair with something else, not a computer but something simpler, maybe a phone, I can't remember, and it worked. So I was shocked, how can for this it works, clearly no driver installed on top and not my desktop?!

Anyway long story short I tried again few more times and it worked. Headphones were now pairing as headphones.

I can't explain why but my point is, I wouldn't give up. I would retry to pair few times (I know, sounds ridiculous, and yet...) without changing anything.

PS: if you know the ins and outs of the BT stack and it makes sense to you, please do explain! I'd love to learn

Install pavucontrol and that will give you a somewhat easier way to play with profiles for audio devices. Check the configuration of your headset, and try flipping it through different modes to see if one works best for you.

Yes I have these and I have paired them to several different Linux machines.

You should try to update them OTA through the phone app, and if that isn't it, then it might be that your Linux distro is messed up. Try to find some other Bluetooth device to see if it pairs.

Do the headphones have some kind of multi device connect function? Try turning it off as it likes to mess with unsupported devices. Also do the headphones support SBC or just proprietary codecs.