November 26, 1999 Web posted at: 8:36 a.m. EST (1336 GMT) by Nicholas Petreley

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(IDG) -- During Fall Comdex, Corel launched its very own distribution of Linux. I managed to download a copy of the CD-ROM image, burn my own CD using that file, and in no time at all had Corel Linux 1.0 installed and running.

We will revisit Corel Linux in more detail when Corel sends us a full copy of the product for review. In the meantime, the freely available version made quite an impression on me.

Corel addressed all of the complaints I had about the early beta. This alone is cause for praise, because it demonstrates at least one of two encouraging facts: either Corel reads publications like LinuxWorld and cares about what we have to say, or Corel had the right idea all along. Hopefully, there is some truth to both.

But Corel also did what I feared most: it released Corel Linux a bit too soon. While I'm actually quite amazed at how far the product has come since the beta, I have a long list of minor gripes to air, and I'll do so at length in a moment.

Overall, however, I don't want to leave you with a negative impression of Corel Linux. This is an extremely encouraging distribution, especially because it is the first commercial distribution of its caliber based on Debian GNU/Linux.

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Debian is a distribution by and for geeks, and it isn't easy bridging the gap between the Debian user and the average computer-illiterate Windows user -- the antigeek, if you will. Yet this was one of the goals for Corel Linux, and Corel comes very close to achieving it with great panache in this version.

The good news

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The shipping version of Corel Linux includes version 3.3.5 of XFree86, which supports my Diamond Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra video card (sort of -- more on that later). I also had no problems installing Corel Linux on the third partition of my second drive, this time around; the beta version couldn't tolerate this sort of nonstandard installation.

Corel Linux now asks you for a password the first time you log in, regardless of whether you do so as root or as the user you specified at installation time. This is a big improvement over the beta version, which practically encouraged you to leave the root account without a password.

Corel Linux puts most configuration options inside the KDE control center, including video display settings. Windows 9x users will be shocked to find that they can actually change all their TCP/IP settings, or even their Windows Workgroup name, without having to reboot the system.

The new distribution includes a program called Corel Update, which you can use to automatically update software on your system from CD-ROM and various FTP sites. You must have root authority in order to install software, so if you aren't logged in as root when you run this utility, Corel Linux will ask for the root password before going to work. You can also use Corel Update to install individual Debian package files from anywhere on your system. I used it to install the latest version of Compupic from an NFS-mounted drive.

The Corel File Manager is a reasonably faithful clone of Windows Explorer. It presents you with a hierarchical tree of resources in a panel to the left, and presents the contents of the current directory on the right. If you browse a Webpage using the Corel File Manager, it presents the page in the rightmost frame. The best thing about the File Manager, in my opinion, is that it allows you to browse through available NFS and Windows (Samba) resources and mount them.

Overall, Corel Linux goes a long way toward making Linux very much like Windows. Personally, I dislike the Windows interface. But I can also appreciate the fact that there are millions of users who are already accustomed to the way Windows works, and would prefer not to have to relearn anything. And where Corel Linux differs from Windows, it usually does so in a positive way.

Corel Linux's departures from KDE are generally praiseworthy as well. For example, Corel simplifies the process of creating a launcher icon on the desktop. All you do is right-click on the desktop and choose New Nickname. You type in the nickname, browse to the executable, add optional command-line arguments, and choose an icon. This is far less confusing than the full tabbed notebook of settings with which you're usually confronted in KDE. If you do want to be more specific with your settings in Corel Linux, you can get to that notebook easily after you've created the nickname icon.

The bad news

To begin with, as quick and easy as my installation was, the experience wasn't entirely trouble-free. Corel Linux took over the master boot record without asking, thereby overwriting the System Commander boot record on my system. (V Communications' System Commander is a killer boot manager that lets you switch easily among multiple operating systems.)

I find it difficult to complain about this, however; Corel Linux makes this choice for you because it is targeted at novice computer users who come from a Windows background. And the inconvenience to experienced users is minimal. It only took a minute to relocate the Linux loader, and System Commander is a dream when it comes to recovering its master boot record.

Although the video setup options were adequate, they were only adequate. The Corel Linux video settings dialog only knows about eleven generic monitor types! Nevertheless, this truncated list of types brought me surprisingly close to my favorite video settings. I could run at 1600 by 1200 pixels at 70 Hz with 32 bit color using the Corel settings. That's fine, but my monitor is capable of 85 Hz at that resolution, and 85 Hz really helps reduce flicker. I was eventually able to make the changes necessary to bump it up to 85 Hz, but the average Windows user probably won't have a clue as to what to do.

In addition, I edited the XF86Config file (and a few other files) to make sure KDE starts up with 100 dpi fonts. The default 75 dpi fonts are too small for a 1600 by 1200 resolution. To be fair, though, I don't know of any distribution that makes it easy to switch to 100 dpi fonts for high resolutions.

I could never get KDE to place windows on the desktop intelligently. In fact, the window placement policy setting in the control center sometimes doesn't seem to have any immediate effect at all. The control center itself is often quirky, too. For example, sometimes the Font Settings or Windows Workgroup Settings dialog would up unexpectedly over and over again until I exited the control center and restarted it.

If you set the docked task bar to include all tasks on all desktops, it won't remember that setting. As far as I can tell, the task bar doesn't expand into two rows when you fill it up, even when there's plenty of room to do so.

I like the fact that Corel simplified the process of adding a launcher icon to the desktop. But it is annoying that, when it comes time to choose an icon, you don't have the option to specify a directory path other than the default ones.

Now and then, the Corel Linux desktop runs excruciatingly slowly. After fiddling with various pieces of the system for a weekend, I now suspect the visual pager, used to switch among virtual desktops, as the culprit.

The performance is usually very snappy until I open up the visual pager from the panel, after which everything goes downhill. And the system remains slow even after I exit the visual pager; I actually have to log out and then log back in order to get the speed back. If you experience this problem, I suggest you refrain from ever using the visual pager, and instead simply click on the numbered buttons to switch from one virtual desktop to another.

When you click OK in order to shut down the system, the dialog box doesn't go away as the machine makes its preparations to shut down. Until the machine actually shuts down, the dialog box continues to respond to clicks, which makes you think that it's ignoring you.

You will note that, when used to mount an NFS directory, the Corel File Manager offers a check box that indicates that the resource in question is to be remounted every time you log in. In actuality, however, it just leaves the NFS directory mounted when you log out. And, the next time you boot the workstation, it will not remount that resource when you log in. Corel Linux remounted Samba resources fine, however.

The Corel Update program doesn't seem to remember any of the custom paths to Debian resource sites. Right now the default Corel FTP site is pretty useless, since it is constantly at its limit of 300 users.

Corel Linux is also pretty thin on software (at least with respect to the CD-ROM image you can download, which is all I've been able to test so far). That's probably why the image is only about 300 MB. It doesn't include some of the old, familiar software, such as the email programs Pine or Mutt. This may be because these kinds of programs aren't suited to the target audience.

I was surprised that the only version of Netscape I could find on the CD was Navigator, the bare-bones browser. I use Netscape Communicator because it includes mail, newsgroups, etc. I downloaded the glibc 2.0 version of Netscape Communicator from a Netscape FTP server, but that version complained about shared libraries and wouldn't run. I tried Mozilla M11 but it complained about a missing symbol in a library and wouldn't run either. Finally, I downloaded the libc5 version of Netscape Communicator, and that did the trick.

The temporary verdict

No doubt the fact that Corel has copied some of Windows in order to make Linux easier to use will rankle some Linux fans. And some questions remain on how Corel intends to handle the source code for its improvements to KDE and Linux. But I think history will vindicate most of Corel's decisions. We'll see.

Outside of the philosophical questions, however, I also hesitate to make any final conclusions about Corel Linux until I see the full shipping product. But I can't help but be very optimistic about this distribution, and I look forward to watching what Corel does with it in the near future.