Tokyo, Japan — As Newsbytes reported, with a strong share of the Japanese Linux market, Tokyo-based Pacific Hitech is expanding its sights overseas with a new US office. The company also hopes it can turn its market-leading bilingual Linux solution in Japan to an advantage in the race for dominance in China’s emerging Linux sector.

Pacific Hitech’s involvement with Linux began in 1993 when the company handled distribution for the Slackware version of Linux in Japan. The company was also linked with Red Hat, hosting its international Web site and FTP site, and growing interest in the free version of Unix in Japan pushed the company to develop its own distribution in 1997.

The company’s own product added support for Japanese double-byte fonts and localized much of the operating system’s software for the Japanese market.

“We started selling Turbo Linux 1.0 last year,” explained Cliff Miller, chief executive officer of Pacific Hitech. “Because of its Japanese capabilities, it instantly became a hit and we had a hard time keeping up with demand. Version 2.0 was released in July and it was the number one seller in Laox (a major Japanese computer store) in its first couple of weeks.”

The software also won an accolade from Nikkei Byte, a major Japanese computer magazine. Turbo Linux received the editor’s choice award for software product of the year 1998, beating out all other competitors.

Market research also named the software the number two operating system in terms of retail sales in Japan. Turbo Linux was responsible for 7.35 percent of all sales of shrink-wrapped OS software, ahead of Apple’s MacOS at 6.12 percent. The survey did not include shipments of pre-installed OS software or copies distributed through bundling agreements or with books.

Continuing development has resulted in the release of version 3.0 of Turbo Linux, in Japanese on December 5. Available in both standard and professional editions, the latter containing more commercial software, the new version will also be released in an English language version in the United States.

To spearhead its drive into the North American market, Pacific Hitech opened a new office in Oakland, California, which will handle marketing and sales and is basing its manufacturing, operations and support functions in Salt Lake City. The English version of Turbo Linux 3.0 is expected to be available later in December, although a preview version was made available at Comdex Fall in Las Vegas.

Miller says that like most distributions of Linux, the low end is pretty much similar to its competitors. Turbo Linux differs, he says, in its installer and desktop utilities. The installer allows users select which components of the distribution are installed and also allows applications to be installed from a network. At the desktop utilities level, the company’s TurboDesk utility has proved popular with users and now includes a new application launcher similar to those found on Microsoft’s Windows or the MacOS.

With the launch into the US market, Miller is turning his attention to China. The company plans to open an office in China in January 1999 from which it will attack the local Linux market. Pacific HiTech’s head start in double-byte Linux, required for handling of the complex Japanese character set, will hopefully mean the company has a head-start over its competitors in China.

To further develop a localized version of the software, the company is about to announce a tie-up with CERNET, the Chinese academic backbone, and Qinghua University. The three will jointly open and operate a Chinese Linux research center, the first such center in China.

Back in Japan, with the lion’s share of the consumer Linux market, the company is attempting to crack the corporate sector. In early 1999, it plans to launch two new products in the Japan and US markets, an Internet server package and intranet server package based on Turbo Linux.

A problem for existing Linux distributions is the lack of commercial grade service and support available to corporate users. To help solve this stumbling block to the operating system’s acceptance, Pacific HiTech has inked a deal with a unit of Japan’s Otsuka Shokai for a telephone support service. The service will back up a Web-based help service and a soon-to-be-launched e-mail support service.

The work is already paying off, said Miller, who cited an unnamed Japanese organization that is switching an installation of 20,000 machines based on Hewlett-Packard’s Unix to Turbo Linux. In some other examples of recent big wins for the company, Kyoto University will install the operating system on 600 machines and a large telecommunications company will begin installing the OS on desktops.

Among deals the company is working on, it says a consumer electronics giant has agreed to offer Turbo Linux-based notebook computers and a big-three international PC maker and nationwide system integrator will offer Turbo Linux- based servers.