Dell sells wireless keyboards and mice that use a Dell Universal Pairing system. Does this work out of the box in Ubuntu?
71.2k 59 59 gold badges 222 222 silver badges 330 330 bronze badges asked Dec 16, 2016 at 1:23 Robert Ancell Robert Ancell 1,549 12 12 silver badges 26 26 bronze badgesThis device looks suspiciously similar to the Logitech Unifying receiver, and I wonder if it is a rebranded device. See askubuntu.com/questions/113984/… for information about support for that in Ubuntu.
Commented Dec 16, 2016 at 1:24I can confirm the link is dead. Also I can confirm your second link (in comments) is correct in that I have Logitech K800 backlit keyboard and MX Pro mouse that work out of the box (plug and play). I think Elder Geek's answer is a good one given the circumstances here.
Commented Dec 25, 2016 at 21:46@WinEunuuchs2Unix Since you have the hardware and can provide lsusb output I think you should write an answer to this one. I have no doubt it will be superior to mine as I am unable to provide such details.
Commented Dec 27, 2016 at 15:25 It works out of the box on Ubuntu 18.10. Commented Oct 22, 2018 at 16:31the dongle will work with paired devices but pairing wil not work, see github.com/pwr-Solaar/Solaar/issues/471
Commented Jan 8, 2023 at 11:40May I suggest a workaround?
I ran into this problem with a new Dell Wireless keyboard (WK717) and mouse (WM527). These devices have 3 wireless connection options:
The doc doesn't say what is the difference between the two bluetooth modes. With my Dell Precision 7530 (Ubuntu), I can connect both keyboard and mouse via bluetooth (2 only). When pairing the keyboard, I had to enter a numeric pairing code. After that the keyboard was not working at all, but the mouse works fine.
I managed to get the keyboard to work eventually, but this required the help of a MacBook Pro where I plugged the Dell Unifying Receiver and had the keyboard in mode 1. On the Mac, a keyboard dialog opened prompting me to type the key immediately to the right of the left Shift key and then to type the key immediately to the left of the right Shift key. After that, the keyboard was fully functional on the Mac.
Finally I plugged the Dell Unifying Receiver into my Ubuntu laptop.
Now, the keyboard works just fine. Note that I didn't attempt to install Solaar: The Linux devices manager for the Logitech Unifying Receiver since the Dell Unifying Receiver is different from the Logitech Unifying Receiver.
117k 119 119 gold badges 286 286 silver badges 317 317 bronze badges answered Sep 28, 2018 at 18:45 Nicolas Rouquette Nicolas Rouquette 121 3 3 bronze badgeswhy did you prefer to use dell universal receiver vs bluetooth? I have a problem with the latest option and wonder if you had the same or not (askubuntu.com/questions/1394109/…)
Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 12:38The Universal Pairing software (downloaded from chosen accessory's software) does not have Linux binaries.
However if you have Windows available (possibly via Wine - n.b. untested)
Boom. A bit tedious, but you should only need to ever do it once.
HINT: don't do what I did and try to pair a device to multiple receivers! It seems the device can only pair to one at a time.
NOTE: I tried connecting a WM527 mouse via bluetooth and found it really laggy. Might be an issue with my adapters though.
answered Nov 6, 2019 at 10:54 236 2 2 silver badges 4 4 bronze badgesJust wanted to add that this worked great and is a likely a better solution than switching to bluetooth due to lag and limit on bluetooth device connections
Commented Jun 30, 2021 at 7:54with wine , the dell universal receiver Control Panel APP_IO_W7_W8_W10_A00_Setup-VMRGG_ZPE.exe started but acted like no dongle was plugged-in
Commented Jan 8, 2023 at 11:52The link you provided is dead and it seems clear that they aren't compatible with the Logitech Unifying Technology devices. I cannot find any mention of this Dell technology working under any version of Linux. The safe bet is to just say no. If you bought any of these devices I hope for your sake I'm wrong, but I can't find any evidence to disprove my conjecture. If you have one and obtain the output of lsusb you can check here to see it the device has previously been reported as recognized.
answered Dec 22, 2016 at 18:05 Elder Geek Elder Geek 36.2k 26 26 gold badges 98 98 silver badges 187 187 bronze badgesYou can buy them from the New Zealand store - accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/… . I don't have one but was considering getting one.
Commented Dec 23, 2016 at 3:18That's 1/2 a world away from me. (well outside my travel range.) If they have a favorable return policy at your local store you could obtain one, test it and know for certain. If not, I'd keep my money in my pocket for the time being; as I can't find any mention of support for any Linux kernel I would rate the odds extremely low.
Commented Dec 23, 2016 at 11:48We don't do shopping recommendations here but I can tell you that I've had good luck with Rosewill Wireless HID's and the prices are typically more attractive.
Commented Dec 23, 2016 at 11:55Apparently it works out of the box on 18.10, according to this comment by Morteza Milani, so presumably it will work on subsequent versions as well.
According to this 2016 PDF for KM636, which uses the Dell Universal Receiver, Ubuntu is supported:
The same is stated in this 2015 PDF for the WM126, which also uses the Dell Universal Receiver:
According to Device 'Dell Universal Receiver', it is "detected" by Ubuntu 18.10 and above:
Following on from Nicholas Roquette's answer, the two Bluetooth modes refer to Dual Mode Bluetooth:
Bluetooth has evolved from Bluetooth 1.0 to the current iteration of Bluetooth 5.0, and each version came with big changes in how Bluetooth devices interact with each other (read about Bluetooth 1.0 vs 2.0 vs 3.0 vs 4.0 vs 5.0 here). Between Bluetooth 3.0 and Bluetooth 4.0 came Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE for short. BLE presented an entirely different use case, one that made Bluetooth 3.0 (also known as Bluetooth Classic) still relevant. This posed a problem for some devices that had multiple uses, like smartphones.
This is where having both Bluetooth Classic and BLE became important. We discussed this topic in another previous blog here at Symmetry (read the post here).
Dual-Mode Bluetooth 5 represents the advancement of this need. By having both Bluetooth Classic and BLE, applications can have the best of both worlds, on that incorporates powerful, long-range Bluetooth with power-saving BLE and Bluetooth MESH.
Interestingly, the 2016 PDF for the WK717 suggests that Ubuntu is supported for the 2.4 GHz connection, but not for the "dual-mode" Bluetooth connection:
