Corel | Drew1440: Blog

An early Linux distro, this time by Corel who also developed Corel Draw and is known for PaintShop Pro and WordPerfect office suite

Install

The installer has a very Windows-like look to it, at least going by the window styles.

Originally I tried using the Cirrus Logic GD5440, but the X Window system would not start up with that card. Instead, I tried S3 Vision968 instead, which actually worked fine. I guess certain cards have issues running under Linux

Boot

The logon screen on the left, and the default desktop after a fresh install. It seems that most drivers for the hardware were detected and installed, all except for the sound.

Sound

This was an issue trying to get the sound to work with this distro, at first I tried using the SoundBlaster AWE32 (both normal and PnP versions) and using the sndconfig command in the terminal to configure it but I had no luck. The PnP version said it was detected and set up but after rebooting there still wasn’t sound. Using the regular AW32 resulted in no devices being detected, even after using the –noprobe switch to force it into selecting the soundcard values.

Lastly, I tried using the Ensoniq that 86Box emulates and although this is automatically detected by the OS, I still had no luck getting the sound to work.

Meanwhile, everything else seemed to work, the network card & the SCSI adaptor.

Applications

There are a few applications bundled with the OS, some will also appear in other distro’s

Games

kblackBox (0.3.0) No idea how this game works…

Konquest (0.99.1) Not much luck with this one either

Mahjong (0.4.1) Typical Mahjong clone

Minesweeper (kmines 1.0.1a): Standard Windows minesweeper clone

Patience (0.7.3) Looks like another solitaire clone

Poker (kpoker 0.5)

Reversi (kreversi 1.0.1)

SameGame (0.4) Objective is to clear the board by clicking on groups of colours

Shisen-Sho (kshisen 1.1): Looks like Mahjong, objective is to move pairs of matching pattens/tiles that are on the same line, within 3 spaces of each other

Smiletris (Ksmiletris 1.1) Sort of like Tetris, but blocks drop in pieces of three. According to the help documentation, at least two blocks vertically have to have matching patterns to be removed.

Snake Race (0.2.1): A bizarre take on the snake game formula, you have to control your snake and eat as many apples as possible, whilst avoiding the computer-controlled snake. There is a ball flying about, but I have no clue as to what that does? Annoying it you open the menu to change difficulty, the game does not pause and will continue playing in the background.
You can also customize the game itself, like changing the background image. Or set the amount of computer-controlled snakes.

Sokiban (ksokoban 0.2.2) A game where you have to push the diamonds into the correct holes in order to progress to the next level. Same as what was included in Mandrake 7.

Graphics

the GIMP (1.0.2) Image and photo editing application

PS Viewer (kghostview 0.7) Simple image viewer

Multimedia

CD Player: Standard CD Player, I couldn’t get this to recognize any mounted CD audio formations (They were mounted as BIN/CUE)

Media Player (kmedia 1.0) plays back WAV format files

MIDI/Karaoke Player: Starts up fine, but unable to test any MIDI files due to the lack of working sound

XMMS (0.9.5.1): X Multimedia system, sort of acts like WINAMP. Has support for MP2 and MP3 files.

Network

KVIRC (1.1): An IRC client that asks a lot of questions on startup, like where you want the config files to be saved, and if you want an icon placed on desktop.

KRN (0.6.0) : Newsgroup client

Samba Server Wizard: Sets up your computer to share files within a workgroup, and to share printers if needed, Samba is the protocol that Windows uses to share files within a local network.

System

Corel Update: Searches for updated packages and new components to be installed. No longer functional since the update servers are now offline.

Event Viewer: Similar to the Windows event viewer, shows any issues or events logged with the system. Very useful for troubleshooting, here it found that the AWE32 soundcard was not being detected properly.

Font Manager: Shows X11 and KDE fonts currently installed on the system

MIME Editor: Change application file type defaults, i.e which program to open DOC files in

Process manager: Like the task manager, shows running processes and how much resources they are consuming

User manager: Add and manage user accounts, and any background users for specific processes.

Utilities

Archive Administrator (0.5): Create and open tgz files

Calculator (kCalc 1.2.7): Functions as a regular or a scientific calculator, looks very similar to the one found in versions of Microsoft Windows

Console: Enter bash terminal commands here

Format Floppy (kFloppy 1.1.2) : Formats a floppy disk, supports both 3.5 and 5.25 inch drives

Hex Editor: View hex value for certain files

Note (knote): Similar to sticky notes, you can add different post it notes to the desktop

Text Editor (kwrite 0.98): Text editor, like Windows notepad

Online Services

Corel also bundled a few links and utilities to online services, these were typically links to products Corel had developed or had sponsored.

Other Applications

Netscape Navigator (4.7): The default web browser for the system.

Most of the built-in links have expired and do not return any proper webpages, some even throw up a phishing warning by my ISP (CorelCity).

Still, I was able to load Richard Stallman’s own website, although the archive version works better

Acrobat Reader: I’m surprised that this was here, I didn’t think Adobe developed Acrobat for Linux, unless this is a Wine port. Sadly it refused to work, with only an error message appearing.

Control Center

Various elements of the Corel Linux operating system can be configured here, and details of the system will be shown here. In essence, it’s the systems Control Panel.

There’s a variety of themes to choose from they add style to the windows, taskbar and background image. You can also stick with the default theme, and just use a different preset colour scheme, or you can modify the individual colours themselves.
There are also system sounds, but I could not get the soundcard to function in this operating system.

Sample Themes