Corel Linux

[Chris Midkiff]

I bit of information about my recent experience with Corel linux.  I
deceded to download and install Corel Linux on my test box last friday.  

A little history...  I am a network admin and programmer, and have fairly
extensive experience with Redhat and it's progeny.  I have also installed
Caldera a couple of times, but have never played with Debian (which is what
Corel is based on).  My test box is a K6 233 with 64mb Ram and a 4gig IDE
drive.  It has a 4mb Diamond 3D Pro (S3 based) pci video card, a 3com 3c509 
isa network card, and an isa SB Pro sound card.  The system is connected to a
cable modem through a Coyote-linux based router/masq server.

The Downloaded iso image(about 350mb), burned to cd, is bootable.  The installer
boots to an appealing graphical screen.  The installer asked whether I wanted a
kde workstation, server, or custom install.  I chose Custom and selected all of
the packages.  Nice tree/checkbox selector, but very little granularity.  (you
could pick kde, or not.  No control over which kde components) The installer
then asked me for a username (no password, for this user or root either one). 
It then wanted to know whether to take over the whole disk, or let me partition
myself.  As this is a test box, I let it take the drive.  The system then
copied all of the packages with nothing but a progress bar for feedback. (been
nice to see the curent package name, etc) and rebooted.

Corel came up with a kde-ish gui login screen. I logged in with root and no pw.
 It prompted me to change the root password, then came up into kde.  Kde
started in 1024x768 with 16b color. (keep in mind, I never was asked any video
questions at all)  The default kde install has all of kde's regular games,
netscape, the gimp,  and most of the common utilities.  There are only 4
buttons on the pannel.  Corel's file manager (Very Explorer-ish, doubles as a
web browser, and auto-mounts cd's and fdd's), xconsole, a text editor, and help.

I had to insmod my 3c509, and sndconfig for my sbpro, but everything else
worked perfectly.  The only real drawback I can find is lack of ipx protocol
support.  I run a novell environment here, and it looks as if I'm going to have
to compile my own kernel if I want IPX.  This really would'nt bother most
people, I guess.  There is a samba config wizzard that works pretty well for
smb type sharing, and yes, you can browse the "Network Neighborhood" from the
"Explorer" if your into that...  Also, Citrix's ICA client for linux won't
work. Complains about libSM.so.6 not being available.

One more thing, Corel has hidden all of the boot sequence feedback under a
splash screen.  Makes it look nice, but I like being able to watch as system
daemons and modules get loaded.  Just a "Fuzzy Feeling" kind of thing, really.

-- 
Chris Midkiff
<insert silly little sig> 
cmidkiff at kc.rr.com