Corel Linux 1.0

Linux is probably the biggest thing to hit the computer world in the
last decade. It's making big headlines in the technology press and has
recently made a lot of people a lot of money in the stock
market. However, it's also got something of a reputation as being
difficult to install and equally difficult to use as a desktop
system.

Not any more.

Corel have collaborated with Debian and KDE to produce what may well
be "Linux for the rest of us". It's easy to install, easy to manage,
and is packed with such goodies as an MP3 player, a web browser
(Netscape), and Corel's WordPerfect 8 for Linux. Corel also tout other
attractive features such as a simple installer, file manager and
software upgrade utility a la Windows Update. Being a long-time Linux
user and a hardened skeptic, I set about testing it out.

My target machine was a Dell OptiPlex GX1 with Windows 95
preinstalled. This is, I'd guess, a pretty typical setup - a desktop
machine with something of Microsoft's running the show. Since I didn't
intended jettisoning my Windows installation, I wanted a setup that'd
allow me to try out Linux, and go back to Windows if I was unhappy.

The GX1 is happy to boot from CD, so I did that; if your machine won't
boot from CD, or is set up not to, there's a boot disk that'll do the
trick. There's even an app on the disk that runs under Windows to
create a boot disk for you. The boot screen comes up with a big Corel
Linux splash, complete with spinning CD graphic. Then comes a series
of dialogs: your standard license agreement ("I will not sue if your
product burns my house down"), a request for a username you can use on
Linux, a choice of installs (see below), a choice of install
locations, and finally, the "Press here to Install" button. That
certainly impressed me; I'm more used to page after page of
incomprehensible questions.

Before I installed, I investigated the options a little more. Your
installation choices are standard desktop, desktop plus, server, and
custom. The server option further gives you a choice of setting up
mail, web and/or file and print servers. desktop plus adds some
developer tools to your desktop install, and custom gives you the full
list of available bits and lets you choose what you want. Aha! I knew
it'd be there somewhere!

The install location options weren't as comprehensive or as
comprehensible as I'd hoped. The easy choices are to either take over
your existing machine, and wave goodbye to Windows, or install Linux
in your exisiting Windows partition where it will cohabit with
Windows. Your other options are use available free space, or
repartition the disks. The latter is familiar territory for those of
us who've installed Linux before; the former was greyed out on my
install, which I can only conclude means it couldn't find free space
to its liking on my 6GB drive. I had hoped it'd locate free space on
the Windows disk and make it available.

The install took about 20 minutes (Pentium III 450, 40X CDROM), after
which the machine invited me to "click here to reboot". On doing so, I
noted that it thoughtfully ejected the CDROM so the machine wouldn't
boot off it again! When it rebooted, I was dropped back into Windows,
much to my surprise. Fortunately, being an old hand at Linux, I shut
the machine down to MS-DOS and ran the batch file in C:\CDL which
booted Linux. I suspect this detail may be in the documentation, but
we reviewers have to make do with Release Notes for that sort of
thing!

On startup, the machine went through a one-off system setup, and
then brought up a graphic login screen. Upon entering my username, I
was presented with the Corel Desktop, and a dialog making me set my
password. Good move! Unfortunately, the administrator account on the
system was left unpassworded. This is a serious flaw if your machine
is networked.

The initial desktop has a familar look to it: there's a trashcan,
icons for netscape and word perfect, a "My Home" icon to run the file
manager, and a printer icon. At the bottom of the screen there's a
taskbar with a few tools on it, such as command shell, editor, help, a
clock, and a button with a globe on it which is Corel Linux's "Start"
button.

My first task was to hook up to the office network, so I located the
Control Panel (it's on the "Start" menu), selected the network panel,
fed in the same settings as I'd have given Windows, then pressed
"Apply". Presto - Network connection! No reboots, no driver loads, no
"please insert the Corel Linux CD". Once on the network, I brought up
the Corel File Manager, and discovered I could browse all the
workgroups in the office, and log in to each one individually - i.e. I
could log in as an Admin to one group, as myself to another, as
another user to a third, etc. Very useful for admins, that. In
addition to the Windows network, I was also able to browse the NFS
(Network File Sharing) network.

The next thing I tried was the "update" feature, since I'd heard there
were some new packages available since the CD was released. I fired up
the Update application - noting in passing that the Start Menu
maintains a list of recently-run applications - and it connected to
Corel's site and gave me a list of available packages. I selected a
few, pressed the update button, and it installed them without
complaint.

Finally, I went for the most-complained about Linux task - setting up
a printer. Double-clicking on the printer icon on the desktop brought
up the appropriate page of the Control Center, which I filled in with
the details. Then I tried printing a page from Netscape, to no
avail. A quick check of the settings revealed it required one extra
parameter, after which printing worked like a dream.

Overall, I found the system occasionally sluggish to use, but I'd put
this down largely to the fact that I'd chosen a Linux-over-Windows
install - Linux running in its own disk partition gets much faster
disk access and thus performs better. As a side note, installing over
Windows added an extra 100MB to the listed disk space requirement of
500MB. However, diskspace requirements are pointed out at the start of
the install process, so you'll not get halfway through and then run
into trouble.

This isn't a system for underpowered machines, mind you - the choice
of KDE as the desktop, while it gives a friendly user interface with
the benefits of drag-and-drop, multiple desktops, and so forth, does
mean that the machine will require a decent chunk of horsepower to
drive the visual side of things. Additionally, Corel are intitally
aiming squarely at newer desktop PCs, so if you're running a laptop or
anything pre-Pentium, you may run into difficulty. Corel provide a
comprehensive hardware compatibility list, and if you're the
adventurous and (persistent!) sort there's every chance that you'll
get Linux running on pretty much anything from a 486 up.

On the applications side, Corel WordPerfect seems happy enough to load
and save an assortment of third-party document formats - Microsoft
Word 97 and predecessors, StarOffice, etc. - but you'll have to wait a
little longer for the rest of their office package, or download a copy
of StarOffice from Sun Microsystems and use that instead. At least
you'll be able to get your colleagues' documents off the network, and
print them when you're done!

The verdict: It still has a few rough edges, but it looks like Corel
may be well on the way to delivering a serious Windows challenger.