Corel is definitely the Linux company most tuned into the needs of end users who aren't Linux experts, but that isn't reflected in the documentation with the retail versions of Corel Linux. The 354-page user guide is decent documentation: while the Red Hat Linux 6.1 documentation may feature more pages, the Corel Linux documentation is better written, better designed, better organized and in general much more useful. We just wish that there was more of it: 354 pages seems unnecessarily terse.

Especially when it's also included as online hypertext help on the Corel Linux desktop. Most Linux users—newbie or not—will appreciate the new online help, just like you'd find the Windows or Macintosh desktop. Accessible from a Web browser (Netscape Navigator, by default), the Corel Linux online help can be browsed by subject or searched by keyword. Personally, we've always found the online help in Linux to be sorely lacking: the Linux online-manual pages are better suited for programmers than end users, and any info pages tend to be too terse to be useful. (Sadly, those who download Corel Linux don't get this online hypertext help.)

The Deluxe Edition includes a 700-page guide to WordPerfect for X Window. Corel has offered WordPerfect for UNIX for several years, and this documentation is a generic guide for using WordPerfect on UNIX systems. In general, most users won't notice the difference between a general UNIX documentation and a Linux-specific manual, although the screen shots won't be as much help.

In addition, there's the usual online documentation: manual pages, FAQs and info pages.

The assumption is that you'll be using Corel Linux as a desktop operating system, not as a server OS. As a result, not one page of the printed documentation covers server installation or configuration. The advice is to use the online server documentation packages, which only come with the retail versions, not the free download.

Overall, we'd rate the documentation as being more than adequate for desktop users and adequate for server installations. Most Corel Linux users won't need a 700-page guide to WordPerfect for X Window, and that level of attention to detail could be better spent on the general system documentation.

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