LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Mike Andrew <mikero@norfolk.nf>
  To  : linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
  Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 23:42:17 +1130

Re: Corel Linux

From: Phil Pittard <vk5ham@seol.net.au>

> "Sulis, Adam" wrote:
> >
> > I have been working with Corel Linux since its release, and supporting
the
> > users of the Corel Discussion Group.
> Anyway, I am not just slagging off at Corel's effort or flaming anyone,
> I just think Corel Linux's release as a "functioning" O/S is somewhat
> premature! To release an O/S which cannot perform what are pretty much
> standard accepted Linux functions, does not do the Linux cause any good.
> Corel must be able to stand up in the marketplace & match up against
> other linux distro's and in its present form it does not.
> Please accept my comments as they are intended, constructive criticisms.

I normally won't join a distro flame-war, they're counter-productive, and
clearly, your comments shouldn't be seen as such. It thought your
information was helpful. However, as it  applies to Corel, I am disturbed by
them. In my view, they are a 'me-too' distribution of Caldera who won many
converts by applying an innovative gui install followed by KDE. That's not a
flame against Corel, good luck to them.

They have solely targeted the windoze refugee. Their distro is
intentionally, new machine, desktop only. A cunning hole in the market. How
would Corel 'compete' against redhat?

There was some disturbing correspondence between the developers at Corel and
the kde mailgroup, prior to the corel-linux launch, where they were
attempting to move the code out of GPL and make it proprietary to
themselves. Ie "how can we change such and such" and "must we still apply
the gpl license?". Their motives were unclear. Charitably they might have
been asking honest questions to keep it gpl, but it didn't come across that
way to anyone and the correspondence dried up rapidly.

Corel are in a dark corner, they've been starved to death by Big Bill and
looking for a way out. Their current salvation is the yet-to-emerge Linux
(home) desktop market, and to that end, i applaud them for the effort to
move Linux forward. Their motivation though is very murky indeed. I don't
think at the end of the day it matters muchly what you and I think regarding
it's technical purity as a great Linux network and old-box distro. Mandrake
don't bother either. What matters perhaps, is that Corel put the marketing
muscle into attracting newbies. If, at the end of the day, that newbie says
I installed Corel-Linux, it works, and it works great. that's the bottom
line. For most of us though, it won't nearly be enough and that's fine too.

http://users.nf/linux/ +mirrors
StepByStep submissions: mikero@norfolk.nf



-- 
LinuxSA WWW: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/  IRC: #linuxsa on irc.linux.org.au
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject