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Review
Created: January, 2000
Corel
has jumped into the Linux market with its own version, or distribution,
in Linux parlance. Corel Linux v1.0 emphasizes comfort and familiarity
to Windows users.
Like all operating system installations, much depends on the hardware involved. Using an older system, many problems emerged. For instance:
- On an all SCSI systems, installation caused systems to hang. This turned out to be a setting in the BIOS, which demonstrates how demanding Linux can be. Trivial, perhaps, but annoying.
- The Advanced Install process allows a user to proceed without specifying a swap partition. But because a swap partition wasn't specified, it will stop in the middle of the process, leaving novices none the wiser as to why. The help file also provides no warning about this.
- The mouse was not reliably detected. As you could imagine, this can cause all kinds of interesting problems during the installation process.
Installation of one ISA network card was never successfully accomplished.
None of these problems occurred when installing to a more modern Pentium II system or when installing other Linux versions.
Documentation, accessed in HTML format once the installation is complete, opens a Netscape Navigator session in a two-frame Web page. The left-hand pane displays a handy table of contents and an index. Unfortunately, you can't resize the pane and are forced to scroll to see the full entry. It would also be nice to have access to this documentation on the CD before installation. All help also uses this HTML format.
A standard log-in prompt will ask for your user name, password and, optionally, your domain. It was a surprise, however, to see a pulldown menu that would list all users once they are added. That may be convenient, but any convenience that provides user names introduces a security problem, albeit a minor one. If someone wants to break into a system, having a user name gets him half way there.
It is obvious that Corel wanted to make this OS comfortable for Windows users. Once logged in, the desktop looks much like that of Windows 95/98, including a status bar at the bottom and icons arrayed along the side. Even the Corel File Manager is reminiscent of Windows Explorer, including use of drag and drop for moving or copying files.
Connecting to an ISP using a modem was a challenge. Configuring the modem proved to be a problem. A solution -- blanking a configuration file -- was found by perusing the support newsgroup, but amateurs wouldn't want to try this approach.
Configuring modems can be trying at the best of times, but most Internet service providers include step-by-step instructions that will allow you to configure properly for their service. Corel Linux instructions don't come near duplicating that kind of help.
Once connected, Windows users would recognize some familiar icons in the "tray" area. The dialog to disconnect will also look familiar to Windows users.
It was a bit of a shock to learn that the download version of WordPerfect 8 for Linux cannot be simply installed onto this version of Linux; the OS libraries have changed since this version came out a year ago. Fortunately, the Corel Update application can help.
Corel Update is a facsimile of the Windows Update process, only more refined. Serving as a graphic user interface to some text-based utilities, it lists packages that have been installed or are available from an FTP site set up for this purpose. In this case, it defaults to Corel's FTP site. With a fast linkup, the system updated various packages seamlessly after a select, point and click.
Linux can open new doors for a small business. If you need to run a Web server, for example, it will serve you much better than any Windows operating system. But even with Corel's efforts to provide a familiar, Window-like environment, Linux presents a challenging learning curve. Give yourself plenty of time to do the learning.
Reviewer's rating: 2.75 / 5
Comments: Like all version 1.0 software, Corel Linux v1.0 has its share of bugs and annoyances. Think of it as a light version, possibly a late beta version.
Price: Free for download. $4.95 US, plus shipping and handling, for CD version
-- Terry Fong, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate
Price: $59.99 US, $87 Canadian
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