Corel Linux, also called Corel LinuxOS, was a

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

-based

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

made by

Corel Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviat ...

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. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

and

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was offici ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

, plus

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth major release of Apple's classic Mac OS operating system which was succeeded by Mac OS X (renamed to OS X in 2011 and macOS in 2016) in 2001. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet ...

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

. 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

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...

. 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 for Linux.

Xandros Xandros, Inc. was a software company which sold Xandros Desktop, a Linux distribution. The name Xandros was derived from the X Window System and the Greek island of Andros. Xandros was founded in May 2001 by Linux Global Partners (Will Roseman a ...

purchased the Corel Linux source code and development team when

scrapped its Linux business in August 2001.

System requirements

Corel Linux has the following 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 that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...

. The file manager provided an integrated Windows SMB network browser. 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 Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office suite. Characteristics Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands close to those of Lotus 1-2-3. While i ...

Corel Presentations Corel Presentations (which is 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 the Co ...

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 premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...

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 typically made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented grapes. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different ...

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 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 programs (see below) ...

(stylized CorelDRAW) suite. While the eponymous program was paid software,

Corel Photo-Paint Corel Photo-Paint is a raster graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel since 1992. Corel markets the software for Windows and Mac OS operating systems, previously having marketed versions for Linux (Version 9, requiring Wine). Its primary m ...

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, and ...

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 group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
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 IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...
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 on ...
cookies and bookmarks,
Outlook Outlook or The Outlook may refer to: Computing * Microsoft Outlook, an e-mail and personal information management software product from Microsoft * Outlook.com, a web mail service from Microsoft * Outlook on the web, a suite of web applications ...
,
mIRC mIRC is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client for Windows, created in 1995. It is a fully functional chat utility and its integrated scripting language makes it extensible and versatile. mIRC has been described as "one of the most popular IRC cl ...
, 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.Ubuntu feature announcement from Ubuntu 7.04 release
/ref>

System requirements

Features

Applications

SmartMove

References

Further reading