Hi,
I've done a fair bit of web searching and have found a page or two about installing linux (various distros) on either the Toshiba Libretto L5 (not released in the US yet) or the Sharp Actius MM10 (used to be known as the Mebius MM1 in Japan). They were somewhat useful. However, I was wondering if anyone who frequents LQ happens to own either of these laptops. I'm going to buy one of them soon, but would like to hear about anyone's experiences with getting Linux running.
Most specifically, I would like to know about the chipset for the wireless devices embedded therein. My experience has been that that's the biggest pain to get working; I've installed linux on other laptops in the past, and usually don't have any problems except with the wireless devices.
I can't find any reliable information documenting the chipset of the Actius MM10's wireless device. If anyone has had any experience with this device, I would be greatly interested. I really don't want to fsck around with this because I need to get it working rather quickly (in a day or less) in order to have time to use it to prepare for my oral prelim. exam.
I've been able to get Slack running on all the devices I've attempted to install it on, but I have had to screw with it sometimes, and I would like to know which of these laptops is a better option in regard to the amount of time I'll need to get a usable system up and running. If you've experienced either computer, with or without linux, I would be interested in hearing your opinion of the usability, reliability, etc.

Thanks in advance.

Slack 9.0 is a good call, about the most up to date distro you'll find, as far as the chipset on them... I doubt you're going to run into anyone that owns one of these kids, so if you could post back with the name of the wireless chipset onboard that would help... I was playing with a Toshiba yesterday and its onboard mini-pci card was just another orinoco knockoff so its most likely humorously easy.

If you've got links for spec pages that are in-depth, I mean not just stuff like:

USB 2.0
firewire

But one that actually mentions chipsets, even if its a PDF or something, that would rock.

Cheers,

Finegan

I could find nothing of use for the Sharp. That, the fact that I didn't like Sharp's website and "customer service", and that I know of a many years old Toshiba that can boot after being ejected from a rolling vehicle at 60 miles/hour (cracked the screen, and the driver was in the hospital for weeks) cemented my decision to buy the Libretto L5.
I should get it in a day or two.

The L5 also does dual headed displays (xinerama or true dual-head), which I find to be very useful. Just so there's no confusion, it has its native LCD screen, and it will output to an external VGA device. It has the ability to send different signals to the different devices.

The L5 has a wavelan (Intersil Prism2) wireless card, which uses the orinoco_cs driver. Awesome!

Also, Toshiba actually has a web page supporting Linux on its various machines!
http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/index.htm

http://www.dynamism.com/index.shtml Totally cool people, and who I'm buying the machine from. Next time you're looking for something new and exciting and you don't live where the technology is new, go here.

http://shop.conics.net/laptop/l-5/index2.html I would have bought from here, but they couldn't get it to me in time. They also have some very good pictures of various laptops that aren't available to touch.

The two links just above both have the basic, *mostly* useless stats about the machines, but they are still awesome sights if you want to buy something not available outside of Japan.

http://memebeam.org/toys/ToshibaLibretto Awesome page about the Toshiba Libretto L* series. Some good stats about the hardware, but not in a nice table. I'll probably do some copy/paste action to provide you all with a good set of real stats one of these days.
I'll also post output from "cat /proc/. . ."

I'll probably also post a web page documenting the installation of Slack 9.0 on the L5.


Until then,
Peace.

I don't frequent LQ, but I own the Sharp. I've run a few distros on it now, and they all sort of work. Still getting the ACPI
figured out. Other than that: way cool thing is when it is powered off, it can be connected using the cradle with USB to a linux box and have its (the sharp laptop) disk mounted as /dev/sda (or the next in the usb/scsi list).
This is great for running 'parted' or 'fdisk' . And now, it's great to copy files I want to take with me onto the drive
without turning the power on!
I haven't gotten dual boot working, in that XP overwrite the MBR each time. I haven't gotten suspend/sleep working, but sense that I will when I have a chunk of time. I don't use sound. Wireless and wired network do work well. So far, even with the rough spots, I'm liking it.

Yeah, that cradle was the main reason I considered the Sharp. It sure would have made installation a snap, but I learned a lot about net boot and NFS installation with the Libretto. =-}

Just got it working a few days ago, and I'm having some problems, expecially with USB mouse and acpi - can't figure out how to put the sucker to sleep under Linux.

On the positive side, Mandrake 9.1 recognized the built-in wireless with no problem (I still haven't figured out how to quickly switch from one wireless location to another, but I figure that's my lack of understanding of Linux rather than any problem with the Sharp.) And I haven't had a problem with dual-booting XP. The partitioning software that starts up when you load the Mandrake install disk was able to shrink XP to give me about 8G for Linux, and I switch back and forth all the time.

I'm a Mac guy, and my previous experience with Linux has been fooling with a server installation. At this point, I'm not totally thrilled with Linux on the Sharp; I'll take it on vacation and explore its usefulness as a Road Warrior machine. But I may wind up selling it and going back to an iBook.

Richard

Hey, I noticed some people have installed Linux on the Sharp MM10. I just got mine, and I wanted to install Linux on it, but I'm not sure how. I don't know if I get the free CDROM, but if I don't, how can you install without the CDROM? Is there a way to do it with the cradle?

Thanks,
Nathan

> Hey, I noticed some people have installed Linux on the Sharp MM10.
> I just got mine, and I wanted to install Linux on it, but I'm not sure how.

I'm working on writing mine up. But here's one that is out there:
http://web.zerokarma.sleepers.net/~cuervo/mach/skull

Yeah, I already found your page. I used the cradle and installed Mandrake which is my prefered system. I can't get PXE to work. Any help on that? Can't get the system to the laptop right to fix the bootloader.

Thanks,
Nathan

I didn't do a network boot, but keep an eye for people getting things going on the mm-10. Have you seen this:
http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~daitei/muramasa/