u/AlumiCh__

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue where I cannot enable Bluetooth on my Fedora 44 system. When I go to GNOME Settings and click the Bluetooth toggle, it turns on for a split second and immediately turns itself back off.

I am dual-booting with Windows 11. Bluetooth works perfectly fine in Windows, but fails in Fedora.

Here is my system information and the relevant logs:

System Environment:

• Hardware Model: ThinkBook 14 G8+ AHP
• OS: Fedora 44 (Dual boot with Windows 11)
• Kernel: 7.0.4-200.fc44.x86_64
• Desktop Environment: GNOME Shell 50.1
• Power Management: tuned-ppd
• Bluetooth Hardware: Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bluetooth Radio (ID 0bda:b853 - RTL8852BU)

Logs & Command Outputs:

lsusb | grep -i blue

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:b853 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bluetooth Radio

systemctl status bluetooth shows the service is actively running without errors:

● bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2026-05-13 15:47:58 CST
     Status: "Running"

However, sudo dmesg | grep Bluetooth reveals an opcode failure (Error -16, which I suspect means -EBUSY):

[    7.470813] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
...
[    7.566517] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: btrtl_initialize: key id 0
[    7.566523] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8852bu_fw.bin
[    7.572778] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8852bu_config.bin
[    7.586296] Bluetooth: hci0: AOSP extensions version v0.96
...
[ 1369.379070] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8852bu_config.bin
[ 1369.384570] Bluetooth: hci0: Opcode 0xfcf0 failed: -16
[ 1369.387526] Bluetooth: hci0: AOSP extensions version v0.96
...
[ 1496.203403] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8852bu_config.bin
[ 1496.209648] Bluetooth: hci0: Opcode 0xfcf0 failed: -16

systemctl status systemd-rfkill.service shows it is inactive (dead) and deactivated successfully.

What I have tried so far (without success):

1. Reloading the kernel module: I ran sudo modprobe -r btusb && sudo modprobe btusb. The module unloads and reloads successfully, but the hardware remains stuck in a busy state (producing the same error).
2. Firmware: Checked linux-firmware packages, and they are already fully up to date.
3. Turned off “Fast Startup” in Windows and rebooted into fedora, but still didn’t work.

Has anyone encountered this Opcode 0xfcf0 failed: -16 error with Realtek RTL8852BU adapters? Any help or pointers on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.