Tp-Link UB500 Bluetooth dongle on Ubuntu 20.04

gistfile1.md

The dongle is recognized but the bluetooth UI does not respond

sudo dmesg | grep -i bluetooth

[  371.792424] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin
[  371.792455] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin failed with error -2
[  371.792459] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: firmware file rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin not found

Need to create a couple of symlinks and remove/plug the dongle again:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firmware/rtl_bt/rtl8761b_fw.bin /usr/lib/firmware/rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firmware/rtl_bt/rtl8761b_config.bin /usr/lib/firmware/rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_config.bin

Reference: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-firmware/+bug/1968604

For Handsfree Mode (HFP) On Ubuntu 22.04:

• Install blueman:

    sudo apt-get install blueman
  

• Right click on headphones > Audio profile > Select Headset Head Unitt (HSP/HFP, codec CVSD). Note the codec, the other one won't work