Corel Linux, also called Corel LinuxOS, was a

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

-based

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

made by

Corel Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo ( ), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviation "Cowpland Research Laborat ...

that began beta testing on September 21, 1999 and was released to the public on November 15, 1999. It mainly competed against

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...

and

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, plus

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth and final major release of the classic Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever", highlight ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

. Corel later discontinued the distribution, but did not remove the former Corel Open Source Development website until March 2002. Corel did not use KFM, the standard

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage computer files, files and folder (computing), folders. The most common Computer file#Operations, operations performed on files or groups of files incl ...

. It instead used its own file manager, CFM. This, along with other modifications Corel made, made the operating system incompatible with other versions of Linux much more so than other competitors in the industry. At a time when there was relatively little commercial Linux software available, this was a serious hurdle for Corel and its users. The operating system's Second Edition was released on August 15, 2000, in download, regular and deluxe editions. The latter bundled Corel

WordPerfect Office WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...

for Linux. Xandros purchased the Corel Linux source code and development team when

scrapped its Linux business in August 2001.

System requirements

Features

Corel Linux featured a file manager that was very close in look and feel to

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user i ...

. The file manager provided an integrated Windows SMB

network browser A network browser is a tool used to browse a computer network. An example of this is My Network Places (or ''Network Neighborhood'' in earlier versions of Microsoft Windows). An actual program called Network Browser is offered in Mac OS 9. See al ...

. The company also advertised that the operating system was compatible with its flagship software.

Applications

The key selling point of Corel Linux was its compatibility with the company's WordPerfect applications. The eponymous word processor's eighth version was given away to personal customers in the hopes that they would purchase WordPerfect Office 2000. This suite added the

Quattro Pro Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Alludo, most often as part of Alludo's WordPerfect Office suite. Characteristics Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands close to those of Lotus 1-2-3. While ...

Corel Presentations Corel Presentations, often referred to simply as Presentations, is a presentation program akin to Microsoft PowerPoint and LibreOffice Impress. The current release, version 2021 (Release 21 internally), is available only as part of Corel's Wo ...

and CorelCentral programs. The Deluxe version of that suite added the

Paradox A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true or apparently true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictor ...

database manager and '' Railroad Tycoon II: Gold''. The latter omits a level editor, the network mode and some scenarios from the original game. The 'Limited Edition' of Corel Linux Deluxe came with Civilization: Call to Power instead of Railroad Tycoon II. Unlike the free WordPerfect 8, the office suite was not written natively for Linux, but instead consisted of the Windows programs powered by Corel's fork of the

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

compatibility layer In software engineering, a compatibility layer is an interface that allows binaries for a legacy or foreign system to run on a host system. This translates system calls for the foreign system into native system calls for the host system. With s ...

. As a result, the Linux suite suffered from a performance penalty compared to the Windows version and WordPerfect 8. As with the WordPerfect suite, Corel adapted its graphics applications to run on Linux using Wine. This consisted of the

CorelDraw CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Alludo (formerly Corel Corporation). It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related progr ...

(stylized CorelDRAW) suite. While the eponymous program was paid software, Corel Photo-Paint was available as a free download.

SmartMove

Corel SmartMove was a part of Corel Linux. This application provided the following: # Migrate Microsoft Windows settings to Corel Linux. # Automate restoring settings that are changed by SmartMove. # Provide an easy way to access network folders through Corel Linux. SmartMove was built around the

libraries to read the

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, a ...

settings for the Windows applications and thus be able to migrate them. SmartMove core libraries created a wrapper for the Windows registry to easily look up the settings.

SmartMove looks for existing
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
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 Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...
and
Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...
cookies and bookmarks,
Outlook Outlook or The Outlook may refer to: Computing * Microsoft Outlook, also referred to as ''the classic Outlook'' an e-mail client and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook for Windows, also referred to as ''the ...
,
mIRC mIRC is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Windows with an integrated scripting language allowing the creation of extensions. The software was first released in 1995 and has since been described as "one of the most popular IRC clients avai ...
, 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.

With the death of Corel Linux, this application faded away and is no longer maintained, however similar functionality is now available on at least Ubuntu when installing a dual-boot configuration on a machine that already has Windows on it.

System requirements

Features

Applications

SmartMove

References

Further reading