I am one of those poor bastards that had a hell of a time getting my Airpods working with Linux. Searches led me to going to /etc/bluetooth/main.conf and changing ControllerMode to “bredr”. This got the AirPods working, but then my bt keyboard and mouse wouldn’t connect.
What I wound up doing was switching ControllerMode to bredr, connecting the airpods, then switching ControllerMode back to “dual”. That kept them connected and allowed other devices to also connect.
So, now I’m sharing this for other poor bastards like me who could t get them to work with the steps that are out there.
This worked in Fedora 38 and will be testing with Ubuntu 23.04 and maybe arch today.
It’s not half-baked. Dedicated bluetooth chips can also achieve far better performance. Some of these devices pack qualcom chips that can do lowlatency audio out of the box. And you can use them on basically any device (PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, etc.; everything that allows usb audio devices). I also use it on Windows and it saves me a lot of trouble there; even though Windows does have bluetooth drivers as well.