Sneak Preview: Corel Linux OS Second Edition

By: Michael Hall
Monday, August 7, 2000 08:15:01 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/previews/2159/1/

First Looks

It's a little strange to think that the first looks at Corel's entry into the distribution arena were appearing just last October. Maybe that's because so much has happened since then:

The GNOME project went from the widely-maligned 1.0 release to October GNOME (which was better), to the 1.2 release, which is good enough that Helix Code is happy to package it and send it out on CD's. KDE (which still forms the anchor of the Corel desktop) has moved to within mere months of releasing KDE2, which promises to shine. Eazel, Inc. is working on the Nautilus shell for GNOME. Slackware even broke the heart of the script-kiddy next door by introducing KDE to its distribution, causing my unhappy neighbor to consider going back to Windows because "what's the point?"

My neighbor's unfortunate notions about the matter aside, the trend in the Linux world is clear: usability for the mythical "average user" is getting better in steady increments. The milieu into which Corel placed itself less than a year ago has changed as a result: if you can boot from a CD, agree to some defaults, and get a live network connection up, you're only a download away from two solid and stable desktop environments that remain generally distribution agnostic (if you stick to the major players).

So Corel is dealing with proving a value proposition as it tries to maintain its place as a distribution for people who want to experience Linux but don't want to suffer for it, even as most major distributions are taking the pain out of installing Linux. As ever, the questionable Windows 98 standard looms in the background. If Corel managed to outshine every other distribution in ease of installation and use, it would still be faced with overcoming the simplicity people perceive to exist in Windows.

Corel has kept their product very simple to install, configure, and use. It may lack the sense of being uniquely slick it carried just nine or ten months ago, but it still provides one of the most unthreatening and easy introductions to Linux out there. For the most part, little new ground is broken with this edition. There are some additional tweaks and features that are very welcome, but the core distribution remains largely the same: no surprise for a point release.

Getting Corel Linux OS--Second Edition
Corel will not be releasing the new edition of their OS for another week, timing its release with LinuxWorld in San Jose. Initially, it will only be available for download, but retail outlets should have it by the end of August. Corel Linux will be available in two packages: the Standard Edition (priced at $29.99), and the $89.99 Deluxe Edition (which will include two Loki game CDs, including Myth II--Soulbligher). Details on all the available software haven't been finalized at the time of this preview.

It was a happy set of coincidences that caused Corel Linux OS Second Edition to arrive at our office on the same day the local computer shop informed us that their first Durons had come in. We assembled a new work machine that afternoon, plopped a new hard drive in the old Celeron 466, broke out a (legally licensed) copy of Windows 98SE, and set out to see what life is like for the Windows user looking to make the transition via Corel.

Preparing the Test Machine

We gave Windows its own partition and installed it first to see how it fared, and to see what a Corel install would work like over the top of a "live" Windows setup. Nothing much about the Windows installation presented itself as problematic (though the "drumroll" graphic provoked some snorts), with the exception of its failure to recognize a Linksys Etherfast 10/100 LAN card. We installed the drivers for the NIC once the install was finished, got the machine talking to our primary computer via Samba and provided it Internet connectivity through IP masquerading, installed a few applications, rebooted it several times to make sure things worked consistently, and set out to install Corel alongside it.

Installing Corel Linux
Corel Linux comes on a bootable CD, if your machine can handle them; it's a simple matter to start the installation process by putting the CD in the drive and turning on the computer. If you choose to install from Windows, there's an application that can be launched from within Windows to start the installation, as well. Finally, boot floppies can be made using a simple DOS batch file.

The distribution installs one way: via a polished graphical installation program built around minimizing the number of choices a new user is going to feel compelled to make.

Partitioning the Hard Drive
The thorniest part of most installations, drive partitioning, is dealt with by offering four choices:

• using existing free disk space
• installing within Windows by creating a loopback file system
• overwriting the disk completely
• determining the partition structure on your own using a partition tool

We tried the methods that allowed us to keep the Windows installation intact, starting with the loopback method. There was little to complain about; it worked as advertised, though there was an annoying period where the loopback file system was being set up and the installation program did little to indicate that our machine hadn't locked up. Fortunately, the hard drive light would flicker noticably from its generally steady state now and then.

We decided to bring in Partition Magic for the next installation run. We repartitioned the hard drive into a fairly common scheme, moving and resizing the Windows partition enough to allow a 5 MB /boot partition. We also created a 256 MB swap partition, a 100 MB / partition, a 250 MB /var partition, a 3 GB /usr partition, and a 500 MB /home partition. Partition Magic allowed us to ensure that the Windows installation remained intact.

We wouldn't ordinarily go into a lot of detail about the partitioning scheme; the science of graphical partition tools is fairly well established in most distributions that bother, and even the crankier ones allow use of cfdisk. The problem in Corel's case, though, is that when you prepare to move into the package installation phase and it checks available disk space, the / partition is the only one considered a viable candidate for file installation. Our 100 MB root partition caused the installation to halt due to insufficient disk space. No amount of defining and redefining partitions with the graphical "expert's" tool would induce the installation to proceed.

Another trip to Partition Magic was required as a result, and we simply moved the Windows partition to the back of the drive, defined a swap partition, home partition, and gave the rest to /. The installation proceeded normally with that configuration.

If Corel were aimed at anybody other than new and transitioning Windows users, we'd have serious issues with the partitioning problems we encountered. The confusion the error message itself provoked (it merely states that there's not enough disk space, mentioning nothing of partition sizes) would be hard for a newbie who'd taken the step of reading HOWTOs or tutorials on a reasonable partitioning scheme, but remained uncertain of his or her mastery of the concepts.

Package Installation

Picking packages is also designed to proceed in an automated fashion. There are four levels of installation:

• desktop, which provides a basic productivity workstation
• developer, which introduces development libraries, compilers and related tools
• server, for providing network services
• custom, which allows the user to select individual packages.

The first three methods work from pre-selected lists of packages and install with no further interaction. The "custom" installation launches a package browser. Dangling dependencies are taken care of once all packages are selected and the installer is told to proceed.

Corel has limited the installation to just those elements: partitioning and package installation. When the installation is complete, the machine reboots, and it's available for use. While many distributions spend time with networking, account configuration, and other details, Corel has saved those tasks for later. It definitely increases the sense of ease.

Getting Around Corel Linux OS
Corel provides a slick graphical bootloader, which provides users several options at boot time:

• Corel Linux OS
• VGA Mode, which allows the user to read statup messages and launches X as in monochrome at 640x480
• networkless
• single user
• text mode
• LILO "expert mode"
• Windows 98 (in our case)

With no user input, the bootloader starts a normal session, booting Linux and loading the kdm display manager. By default, Corel continues to use a slightly modified version of the KDE 1.x desktop for the user interface, and most of the Corel tools provided are uniform as part of the KDE environment.

Once within Corel Linux, the real configuration tasks are ahead. We suffered some momentary disorientation: Corel has done an excellent job of integrating configuration around their modified KDE Control Center. As a result, it functions much more like the Windows 'Control Panel', providing a central and unified area for maintaining the system. Though not as complex as a tool like Linuxconf, most of the bases are covered and it's very easy to understand the information required in each area of the program.

One tool we particularly like (returning from the previous release) was the graphical display control, which allows users to set screen resolution and color depth without having to stop X, edit their XF86Config file, and restart. Being able to do this is nothing new to Windows users, and we're glad Corel has introduced this bit of simplicity.

Network Configuration

Our first task was to replicate the network connectivity we had under Windows, which was an unfortunate place to start. The system incorrectly identified our Linksys NIC and attempted to load the module for it proactively. Unfortunately, this tied the card up in such a way that the graphical network card tool couldn't load the correct module.

Worse yet, we eventually discovered that no matter how many times we changed the setting, the system persisted in ignoring our changes and loading the wrong module. It required a visit to /etc/modules to correct the problem. We also discovered that the module for our NIC as shipped was broken. Mercifully we had the source for the module on hand on another machine.

Once the NIC was working, the rest of the network setup was straightforward. As with our Windows installation, we set the machine up to share a DSL connection with our primary machine via IP masquerading. Once we entered the names of our DNS hosts and identified the appropriate gateway machine, we were set. It was also a simple matter to point the configuration tools at our Samba server.

Though we didn't look into it further, Corel has added support for "SoftModems" in this release. We also noted that it included the Roaring Penguin PPP Over Ethernet (PPPoE) client, which is essential to getting DSL to work in some areas. In addition, a new connection wizard makes getting the machine to talk to the Internet over dialup accounts easier.

Corel Smart Move
One remarkably useful app for transitioning Windows included in this release of their OS is "Smart Move," which looks for existing Windows installations on the machine, looks a little further for individual users, and offers to transfer application settings to analogous programs under Linux. It understands how to deal with Internet Explorer and Netscape cookies and bookmarks, Outlook, MIRC, and ICQ settings, and a variety of desktop preferences, including wallpaper, color scheme, and even mouse "handedness." We tried it out with a few settings, but since our Windows installation was fairly new, we didn't have much to check against.

Interestingly enough, Smart Move also appears to have been built around the WINE libraries, though the need for this wasn't immediately apparent.

USB Support
Another new feature found in this edition is USB support; though USB isn't an "official" part of the 2.2 kernel, there is a backport patch available that Corel evidently decided to roll into their distribution. The control panel offers a list of USB devices connected to the machine and their status.

Included Applications and Tools
There are quite a few packages included with the distribution to get the new Linux desktop user going once the installation is hammered out. Corel has included two of its own productivity apps: WordPerfect 8 (the Motif-based version they released for free some time ago), and its new Wine-based Photo-Paint, which is a featureful graphics program similar to PhotoShop or the GIMP.

In addition, it included Adobe's Acrobat Reader, RealPlayer, IBM's Java Virtual Machine, a complete set of OSS sound drivers, a limited edition (read: incomplete) copy of Myth II: Soulblighter, and some more demos from Loki. It's also included the Citrix and GraphOn think client software. Finally, it also provided the BRU backup package.

Impressions

We were not happy about the two biggest problems we had: the partitioning issue and the erroneous detection and installation of our network card. While they left a bad impression, they were overcome easily enough. They did, however, underminethe overall sense of otherwise flawless ease with which the product installed and configured.

We like the fact Corel built its distribution on Debian: the fact that the Debian packaging system is lying underneath probably made design of some of the graphical update and installation tools much easier on Corel's designers. The package management tool Corel included leverages Debian's apt-get to provide smart detection of package archives on CD, which it checks before moving on to 'net-based update archives. We found Corel's updater compared favorably with Red Hat's browser-based update tool, and it provided better feedback and seemed less cumbersome.

The user experience is simplicity itself. No user interface, no matter how rabid its advocates, has taken all the difficulty out of operating a computer, especially one in a networked environment. Corel has, however, arrived at an interface that sticks largely to the style of the Windows Explorer, and offers a few usability tweaks on top of that.

Motivated home users wanting to learn a little about Linux will have a pleasant enough experience installing and configuring the product. Office users placed in front of it will face a gentle learning curve that holds few surprises. With a knowledgeable support person taking the time to provide a few shortcuts to network resources and useful apps, there's no reason Corel can't be deployed as a standard desktop.

Experienced users who are happy with their current distribution will probably not find much here to get them to switch, although it's a good OS for a second machine: we intend to keep our installation intact as a general purpose word processing and web browsing station. The Win98 installation living on the same computer has a doubtful future once "The Sims" has worn out its welcome.