A personal computer must have a Bluetooth adapter in order to communicate with other Bluetooth devices (such as mobile phones, mice and keyboards). While some desktop computers and most recent laptops come with a built-in Bluetooth adapter, others will require an external one in the form of a dongle.
Unlike its predecessor, IrDA, which requires a separate adapter for each device, Bluetooth allows multiple devices to communicate with a computer over a single adapter.
[edit] Operating system support
For more details on this topic, see Bluetooth stack.
Apple has supported Bluetooth since Mac OS X v10.2 which was released in 2002.[7]
For Microsoft platforms, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and later releases have native support for Bluetooth. Previous versions required users to install their Bluetooth adapter's own drivers, which were not directly supported by Microsoft.[8] Microsoft's own Bluetooth dongles (packaged with their Bluetooth computer devices) have no external drivers and thus require at least Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Linux has two popular Bluetooth stacks, BlueZ and Affix. The BlueZ[9] stack is included with most Linux kernels and was originally developed by Qualcomm. The Affix stack was developed by Nokia. FreeBSD features Bluetooth support since its 5.0 release. NetBSD features Bluetooth support since its 4.0 release. Its Bluetooth stack has been ported to OpenBSD as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment