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Toshiba Supports Linux
Matts Kallioniemi writes "Toshiba just now put up a Linux support page. Quite a change from two months ago when they refused to even think about Linux.
Now if I could only get a Libretto ff 1100, but Toshiba Sweden are not importing the Libretto any more. :-( "
This is the crappiest site I have see in a long long time. Remind me again how Linux is at the forefront of the PC revolution.
What a crock.
I ahve a Sattelite and it rungs any flavor of Linux Great on it. No complaints here except for my generic pcmcia nic. I do say that when I called earlier this month about a small resolution difference under Linux they were not much of a help
Like Linux what? Is that something MS just put out..
Ya like i'd believe me if I was you!
Microsoft must be terrified. NOT !!
hahahahahahaha
I'm seriously considering sending them documentation as well as configuration file for the Toshiba notebooks I've installed Linux on around the office. I'm writing this right now on a 740CDT, and I just bought a 2545XCDT for myself. The only thing I haven't been able to get working on either one is the internal modem, but at least on the 2545XCDT it appears to be a PCI modem. I suppose that means I'll have to read some web pages. *chuckle* The only problem I've had so far with the 2545XCDT is that the floppy drive's controller is apparently just a wee bit deviated from the norm, enough so to cause the occasional FDC reply error when you try to read files from disk. (If anyone knows about this, pipe up). I'm going to set up pages for both the 740CDT and the 2545XCDT shortly and add them to the Linux Laptop Page, but I'm giving Toshiba a crack at them as well (provided I can understand their reply emails. *chuckle*)
Tell me again how this is better than Windows ?
How many of you remember the early 80's, right after the original PCs came out, how bad the motherboard manuals were?
I honestly thought that they were translated from Japanese into English by a Russian who couldn't read either language.
Got to admit, though, that I do miss those manuals. They included specs for designing and implementing your own slots and ISA cards. I blasted many old PC motherboards because of the poor translations, but oh what fun it was!!
"For taht which is interface will interfacing with motherboard at clock ticks of 4.77 MHz."
How cool was that?!?
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
Yup. The best message to send about their English use would be new HTML for their pages. Use your Japanese reading skills to translate their other pages. Don't critize, just code.
I recieved e-mail from Toshiba in Japanese.
/. but could not figure out how to leave message here.
Toshiba is overloaded by the e-mail response. They are trying to resond to all the e-mail but shorthanded. Thus they had no time to go through English ones but just started Japanese ones. So be patient.
His e-mail response thanked all the people sending corrections on bad English.
Also he said he peeked into
Looks like good start.
I take great offense to what you have said. I am tri-lingual, Russian, Estonian and English. I am not perfect in any of the three languages. But if need be I can at least have someone proofread my work. This poor example of English shows me that they do not care enough about what they are doing to even have a co-worker look over what they type. In context, the poor grammar and spelling are nothing like we see and post here on /., this came from a business site not an open forum. IMHO whoever wrote this page should have at least had someone else read it over.
/. and could be classified as FUD. So lets think about this logically, we have many international posters here on /. so I would guess that a lot of are multi-lingual. So take your FUD and crawl back into your your little safe place where you are better than other people.
Your broad assumption that most of us are monolingual, is insulting. It only proves that you have no clue as to the population of
Total access 65 counts ('99/7/1) (at 1:20 PM mountain Time) /. effect ;-)
Wonder what it will be after the
If a trainstation is the place where trains stop, what is a workstation?
Its funny, I call Toshiba to find out if they had NT drivers for their laptops a few months back and the person on the phone Yelled at me. "You can't install NT on this PC. If you do you will void your Wty." I was like... chill...
Now they are installing Linux.
I wonder how well thats going to fly...
It says 195 hits now. Is it overflowing at 999 or something?
funny how the libretto still has "the other OS"'s logo on it :)
I wonder if they'll have specs for all their laptops. I have a Sat. Pro 490 CDT that I'd love to get Linux fully running on. I could get RH installed, but never had any luck with the PCMCIA stuff.
I wait with baited breath...
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
...is for Compaq to do the same!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my, that's funny......
grep -ri 'should work'
--
It's legit. There's a link to tce.co.jp on the Toshiba site (http://www.toshiba.co.jp/group/index_j.htm)
OK, the person who wrote this page is a poor English speaker. But the irony is that most of those of you that are laughing at him are completely monolingual, and can't speak or write any non-English language as well as this person wrote English (and no, your knowledge of computer languages, in which all the keywords are English words, isn't an argument against this point).
If anything, the poor English is a good sign that the people putting this site up are technical and have the information we need. If it were marketing people, their English would be perfect but they wouldn't know anything.
The Slashdot community could react to this effort to reach out with a wave of ridicule, or we could say "thanks ... here's what we need." You decide.
My guess is this project _just bearly_ has full corporate approval, so the budjet is tiny until they see some success.
Toshiba spec sheets are here.
Select your model then look at the spec sheet. Chip types and other useful information.
And these two items are usually the ones that are proprietary, with closed specs, and no Linux drivers. Sure I can stick in a PCMCIA modem and ethernet card, but I want them built in (just like the cheapest Win notebooks seem to be able to have built in) so I don't have to worry about these flimsy connectors that plug into the card breaking off. Besides then I could have free card slots for other stuff.
I just brought a toshiba satelite 2065cds about an hour ago. Cant wait to get Linux going on it.
I have to return some videotapes...
Wow are you defensive.
...
The fact is that Toshiba has been supporting Linux in many ways, via people who are active on the tecra-linux@cs.ogi.edu list. One guy recently wrote:
From: "Jonathan A. Buzzard" (jab@hex.prestel.co.uk)
TuxTime and if I have dropped off the edge of the world, I have made a second release of the TuxTime code.
For those not farmilar with TuxTime, it aims to be a clone of Toshiba's MaxTime(tm) for setting of battery save options etc. that runs under Linux/X11. It is in a fairly advanced state and although still rather rough, you can set many of the power saving options under Linux using TuxTime.
The code can be downloaded from my TuxTime web page at
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/hex/tuxtime.html
This release would not have been possible without the generious loan of laptops from Toshiba Europe which has enabled me to test the program on a much wider range of laptops than otherwise would have been possible
I feel very much like this page is not by the company we usually refer to as Toshiba, but another another Company. Did you notice they never use the Toshiba logo? Were you surprised Toshiba would use a 14.4 for their developers connection? Did anyone bother to compare the Kanjis of both companies?
I couldnt loooooooooaaad the frontpage of their server, and I couldnt do a traceroute - it looped
at a061.pageweb.ne.jp. Doesnt sound like a big companys official connection to me...
I got a Libretto 50ct with Debian 2.1..
Everything works great, I have floppy drivers, network card drivers... I even found some apm software for Libretto so I can use all the apm stuff, like change the light on the LCD, suspend and standby mode...
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
First, their hit counter must be rolling because it was at 24 when I got there.
Also, here's the unedited text of the "for developers" page:
We hoping, we want to be good connecting adviser between group for developing Toshiba PC's driver, utility and Toshiba Co. Therefore we complete request from developer groups and we will offer information back which you need information from Toshiba Co. or Therefore we complete request from developer groups and we will offer information back instead of Toshiba Co.
Notice: These information are available with conditions. (Not all free give away). Please request clearly, what you want to do? what kind of information you need, so on. Please understand we are just started to approach in this free field. That's why we will cope case by case, in case of the content need time for answer it or can not give information back.
Please give this matter's inquiry here in.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
Linux is actually a very useful thing to have on a laptop. Not only a useful desktop but a good network analysis tool, out of the box with standard stuff.
NT is horrible for laptops. The pcmcia support blows. Nothing lke booting linux and having it detect your card automagically.
Actually I think linux is th best thing to put on a laptop.
support gun control: take guns from cops
So, here some more information for the Japanese-impaired ;-)
- In Japan, they offer pre-installation service for laptops and desktops if you order more than 10 machines; interestingly, not only for Linux, but also for FreeBSD (not too surprising, as FreeBSD is quite popular in Japan). IMHO this means that they really have some people with technical expertise working on that project.
- If I understand correctly, they also plan to develop machines that have Linux pre-installed for normal sales.
- Furthermore, they plan to develop utilities (not further specified) and drivers of their own.
- They also want to offer free and commercial user support and plan to create a training centre.
- There is already information on the DynaBookSS PORTEGE 3300CT PAP330xx and LibrettoSS 1010CT PAL101xx available. Are they sold outside Japan?
Seems to be a pretty honest attempt to cooperate, which IMO should be acknowledged by supporting them.Chilli
PS: I am sorry for any inaccuracies, but I am neither a native speaker of English nor Japanese.
-=- Just a random lambda hacker
It's not funny. It's sad and extremely bad English. It's not just a small grammatical mistakes. I would not say these guys did not get full corporate support but defiantly these guys never asked their US subsidiary person for proofreading. If this bad English is due to automatic translation, I should say this is a good translation. I remember using one and chucking it 1 hour later. That stupid translation software cost over $1000, phewwwww.
Anyway, be kind, gentleman. It's a good start. And praise their intention or use their intention on our behalf. Positive thinking !
If you really hate this bad English, instead of poking fun here, send them an e-mail telling the true story. --- Dammed it, I did.
--- Sigh in Japanese ---
You have to check out the developers section. Its pretty funny.
When MS wanted to dominate the OS market, it snapped its whip and companies like Toshiba fell in line, refusing to even acknowledge non-MS systems. Now that MS is trying to claim to the DOJ that the existance Linux "proves" it doesn't have a monopoly (and never did), companies like Toshiba convienently put up pages claiming support for Linux.
Do you really mean outsold? Not the estimated user base, the actual boxed sales?
If so I'm impressed.
Toshiba Computer Engineering Corp.
For developers
We hoping, we want to be good connecting adviser between group for developing Toshiba PC's driver, utility and Toshiba Co. Therefore we complete request from developer groups and we will offer information back which you need information from Toshiba Co. or Therefore we complete request from developer groups and we will offer information back instead of Toshiba Co.
Notice: These information are available with conditions. (Not all free give away). Please request clearly, what you want to do? what kind of information you need, so on. Please understand we are just started to approach in this free field. That's why we will cope case by case, in case of the content need time for answer it or can not give information back.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
It works for me , but it's ssslllllloooooowwwwwww....
One of those librettos running linux would be quite nice...
As some people seem to be interested in it - if you have issue 3/99 of German Linux Magazin, there is a detailed description of the installation process. It's a pretty long report of one user's experience. Unfortunately, the article is not available online, the link just leads to the table of contents ;-( Maybe some German readers still have a copy, or you could ask Linux Magazin editors to make available an online version...
When I was searching around for setup information for my Toshiba laptop I remember seeing some postings that the hardware people at Toshiba were not opposed to sharing info with free software developers, but the fact was almost all of their hardware documentation was in Japanese.
BTW, Except for setting up X, installing Redhat6 on my Toshiba Satellite was absolutely painless.
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
believe it or not Linux out sold NT server on Dec of '98 in Japan.
And PowerLinux is made by hitachi(Japanese company)
Also, from what I know quiet a few Sys Adm. Use linux in Japan too
Seems the US is the most Microsoft using region. Then Europe, then asia (dunno 'bout africa and others).
:)
Asia is far away from the states where Microsoft lives, both in miles and culture. No surprise that the irrational choice to just use microsoft stuff like everyone else is less widespread there.
Denmark where I live, used to be a very IBM loyal country. Banks used OS/2 when IBM was pushing that, and apple computers have never really been widely used.
Sweden (right next to us), has always had a lot of apple machines.
It seems that Denmark now is a Microsoft loyal country. The RIPE region has something like 50% of all web servers running Linux, and around 15% on windows. In denmark (which is a part of RIPE) those numbers are reversed. (What _is_ it with us and large firms?)
A friend I have went to Russia to tell some university people how they could solve their computing problems by buying PCs and putting Linux on them (that was a solution they could afford). But they weren't really interested in Linux, they wanted windows because that's what we use in the west. They smoke Marlboro there too
It's really fun to watch how culture and regional differences influence people's decisions.
Meanwhile I'll just be an illoyal dane running the OS that works.
also, if you do have a libretto, i highly recommend debian as by far the easiest distribution to install, given the floppy disk limitation.
--
I'd be interested in knowing a little about that prestige project at DTU, since I'm actually studying there...
/.'ed properly.
Hell, there might even be an english translation of the press release or whatever it is so it can be
At this moment they give very primitive information only. No installation information. Not much of help but a good start.
I bet they did not even tried it. For example, if you want to make multiple partition and try to install their back up CD to HDD, it will zap your partition with no option. I found no information on alternative installtion floppy.
It took me a while to figure it out. I have one of the ultra-slim PC Dynabook SS3300CT (Japanese Windoze98) running Mandrake 6.0. If you reboot (with init 3) just as installed, it will freeze your console keyboard. Topic 97 PCMCIA driver seems to have some problem with keyboard / mouse system. You have to run gpm before pcmcia in Sys-V init. Go check my page for details of installation.
http://home.pacbell.net/aoki
FYI: I have not seen these ultra thin PC in Fry's (American store) but T-zone (Japanese store for Japanese business here) can get them for you in Silicon valley by calling them locally.
The only page with any useful information on is the "Developers" page. Of course this is good, as thats what we want, to be able to support the tosh range. TEC say:
Well this sounds great! But the next paragraph is:
Ok maybe I'm not taking it in the right spirit, and I agree they are definitely making the right noises, but I want to see more from them. Ultimately it will help their business, because us geeks won't just want to buy their systems, chances are we will.
I'm looking forward to seeing how it all develops, and seeing more "support" for Linux in the computing world.
Now all I have to do is make my company see the light. Could be a long time coming though, they've just replaced all their Sun Servers with NT Servers. I couldn't even convince them to use PostgreSQL or MySQL on a linux box instead of buying SQL Server and 300 user licenses.
--
"I was either onto something, or on something!"
Does this mean that they'll do pre-installs of Linux on their machines? Anybody know what distribution they're using?
I think this is one of Keiretsu subsidiary -- KOGAISHA.
TOSHIBA word phrase in this company's Japanese name uses the same 2 Kanjis. (Or should I spell this in singular form Kanji???)