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Me: why did my Bluetooth trackpad suddenly stop working…
Also me: WTF? 
![Screenshot of my system menu showing that Bluetooth is off and giving me the option to turn it off [sic]](https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mastodon-aral/media_attachments/files/000/836/449/original/2ee17d140bd707db.jpeg "Screenshot of my system menu showing that Bluetooth is off and giving me the option to turn it off [sic]")
Great, and this is what it restarts into again… a black screen with a blinking cursor.
FFS!
(After spending ages there it just asked me to enter the disk decryption password… just like last time, after the Bluetooth trackpad stopped working.)
The fix (to this and the original issue)?
Turn it off and on again.
(Restart didn’t work.)
My trust in this Dell XPS 13 + Pop!_OS 18.10/Gnome 3.30 combination is at an all-time low at the moment.
(Thank you all for your suggestions and sorry to hear that some of you have encountered similar issues. Not fun.)
@aral hey, at least your machine has a monitor and some hard-wired input device!
[UNMOVED] @aral yup, guessed so. As @angristan said, it could be due to sleep mode, as sometimes errors in drivers and energy management make the Bluetooth antenna turn on and off improperly
@aral issues like this are why I stopped running Linux and booted back into macOS. I have work to do
@curtismchale @aral Same. I’ll happily use Linux on a server, but not desktop anymore.
@aral I agree that lots of work must be done. But all software, even non-free ones like #Windows, #macOS, #Android, #iOS, #LineageOS, #Ubuntu, #Fedora, and so on. It's relative to which computer pieces/components you have and what you want to do. What I like about #FreeSoftware system distributions such as #Trisquel, #Replicant and many others listed at http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html , is the possibility of being empowered to fully control of my material environment. #WTF #WhatsTheFix ?
@aral I meant to say that all software has errors, they are made by humans, thus not perfect. To know why I used " #WhatsTheFix ?", see https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/f-as-in-freedom-d977/ and for "controlling material environment" see https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/stallman-nussbaum-and-sen-putting-freedom-in-context/ and https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/free-software-free-society/
@aral Time to turn it off even harder, I guess.
@aral lol that's probably some big up with the Bluetooth drivers which Bluez (the Bluetooth manager) doesn't know how to deal with well and makes GNOME show that in turn
@aral *bug, not "up"
@aral i found firing this off works(ish): sudo hciconfig hci0 sspmode 0
@aral What trackpad do you have? Do you like it?
@george_ I’m just using my Apple Magic Trackpad with it. Seems to work fine :)
@aral @george_
In my experience Bluetooth is a very quirky tech with laptops especially. Different protocol versions have known compatibility issues and make for very unstable connexions, "device not found" and other frustrations...
I've always preferred the 2.4Ghz, nano-dongle approach you get on mice for instance. Sure it requires a legacy USB A port but the stability is permanent and it is way more battery friendly on the emitting device.
@aral XPS 9370? if so, it's an awful bug
https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-Developer-Systems/XPS-13-9370-no-bluetooth-after-suspend/td-p/6022892/highlight/false/page/9
@marcaux Yep and thanks for the link, appreciate it.
@aral sury, but don't hold your breath that dell will be able to fix this - I'm waiting since january :-/