Slashdot Mirror

Martin Bialasinski wrote in to send us a press release from Corel which says that future their Linux upcoming Distribution will be based on Debian (Yay!) and KDE.

Martin Bialasinski wrote in to send us a press release from Corel which says that future their Linux upcoming Distribution will be based on Debian (Yay!) and KDE.

The little bird flitted in and told me that San Mehat has left Corel to go work for VA Research. One of his cool projects is getting Linux into the bios. Man, VA seems to be collecting all the fun people.

Garrett Goebel wrote in to let us know that the new NetWinder GS is available for purchase from Corel Computer, even though it is suspiciously absent from their web site. It's apparently a Qube-like device, functionality-wise, and since their is no URL for the story yet, they hopefully won't mind the submitted email pasted below. "

Here's a copy of the announcement I received via email

Dear Corel Customer,

Thank you for your interest in Corel Computer and our NetWinder family of products. The response to date for our Linux-powered thin clients and servers has been tremendous, and we appreciate all the great feedback that customers like you have provided.

Corel Computer is proud to announce the commercial release of our latest NetWinder product...The NetWinder Group Server, a powerful new Open-Source Web server ideally suited for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), workgroups and small businesses. Powered by the Linux operating system, the NetWinder Group Server sets a new standard for Internet and intranet appliances, and comes complete with Apache Web Server software and an easy-to-use, comprehensive set of HTML-based configuration tools.

Special Introductory Offer: To celebrate its launch and to reward our customers who have been waiting to purchase the NetWinder Group Server, we are extending the following special offer: Order before February 12, 1999 and receive a discount of US$100 on each NetWinder Group Server ordered (discount offer applies to a maximum of three NetWinder Group Servers per customer; discount applied at time of purchase).

Order Information: To have a Corel representative contact you and process your Online NetWinder Order, please complete the form at link A Corel representative will contact you as soon as possible after receipt of your submission.

Or call our Toll-Free Order Line (in North America): 1-877-282-6735 Call Direct (outside North America): 1-613-788-6001 (When ordering, please have your credit card ready, or arrange to place your order via a corporate purchase order.)

For more information on Corel Computer and our NetWinder family of products, please visit link

For announcements about Corel Linux software and hardware, and for announcements of general interest to the Linux community, please visit "> link and ."> link "

John Goerzen writes "In a small press release, Corel reports that there were 82,925 Linux downloads in 12 hours. Corel president & CEO Cowpland said, "We have proven that the Linux community wants access to commercial, mainstream applications. . . and we intend to deliver them." (emphasis mine). Corel also has an interesting site on Linux." S: The actual quote was of attempted downloads, but the number is quite reasonable. Hopefully this will keep Corel motivated in porting all the apps they promised a while back. Any news of their anticipated contributions to Wine?

John Goerzen writes "In a small press release, Corel reports that there were 82,925 Linux downloads in 12 hours. Corel president & CEO Cowpland said, "We have proven that the Linux community wants access to commercial, mainstream applications. . . and we intend to deliver them." (emphasis mine). Corel also has an interesting site on Linux." S: The actual quote was of attempted downloads, but the number is quite reasonable. Hopefully this will keep Corel motivated in porting all the apps they promised a while back. Any news of their anticipated contributions to Wine?

John Goerzen writes "In a small press release, Corel reports that there were 82,925 Linux downloads in 12 hours. Corel president & CEO Cowpland said, "We have proven that the Linux community wants access to commercial, mainstream applications. . . and we intend to deliver them." (emphasis mine). Corel also has an interesting site on Linux." S: The actual quote was of attempted downloads, but the number is quite reasonable. Hopefully this will keep Corel motivated in porting all the apps they promised a while back. Any news of their anticipated contributions to Wine?

Mike_Miller writes " Putting Linux at yet another advantage, Corel has announced that by late 1999 it will be giving away its WordPerfect Office 2000 suite for free for personal use to Linux users."

Debian-announce sent out a message today stating that you can now boot Debian on the Corel NetWinders. They used to merely run Red Hat v4.2. You can snag the boot images or A kernel package from Jimpick.com (who also keeps .deb's of most of Gnome around as well)

Garrett Goebel has written in with a short review of the WP8 demo. He starts off: Well, I have downloaded (bz2 or gz) Corel WordPerfect 8.0 for Linux and have been playing around with it for a couple days now... and I have to say that I'm pretty happy. It is a full featured, intuitive, WYSIWYG. -Oh, and I haven't had a crash or needed to reboot my Linux box yet ;-) I was wondering what experience other people are having?

Personally, if WordPerfect 8.0 foreshadows what is to come with the full Corel Office Suite for Linux, then I'm drooling in anticipation. Corel's Resource Guide for the WordPerfect 8.0 Office Suite covers the functionality we can look for in the Linux version. For your average corporate desktop end user, there will be no reason not to run Linux. After all, if you're used to M$ Word, then switching over is easy (short of rewriting all those macros)

Word Perfect has pretty much the same line up of features as M$ Word, and a couple extras. For instance, the shadow cursor which give you real WYSIWYG point click and type "right there" editing. Another thing: It starts up quicker than M$ Word. One feature I couldn't find much documentation on was "remote window". -Will we be able to telecommute in and co-edit documents?

The benefit of having a full featured office suite for Linux, to which your average PC user can easily convert can not be understated. If Corporate IS ever catches on, they'd realize immense savings in licensing and supporting their PC infrastructure. -Not to mention more uptime.

Kevin Forge has written in with an interesting piece called Lawyers use WordPerfect. It talks about his view on free software vs. commercial software, and especially commercial software on free Operating Systems. Check it out. The following is a feature written by Slashdot reader Kevin Forge Lawyers use Word Perfect Each time even a rumor of a commercial app being ported to Linux is mentioned we get comments that run the gamut from ; "Let's all go buy this to show our support for the platform" to "We can achieve most everything that prog offers by using these open source tools so why should we trust our important work to this propriatery bloatware ?".

"who wants world domination"?

We constantly hear the argument that Linux will achieve world domination or that a significant percentage of all computers will be run on Linux in a few years. However to achieve either goal Linux must be a viable option for people with real business needs now.

This brings me to the lawyers we all love to hate. I am siting in a Lawyer's office waiting to be paid for fixing Windows 95 on 2 PCs ( again ) when a client walks out having just spelled out the details of her divorce ( loud enough for me to hear ). Before she is in the parking lot the laser starts spiting out the 1st page of a 30 page court document for her case.

How the hell could that be done so fast ?

Simple It was already done. The details that change are few and far between. Things like names, addresses and dates. Once these are entered into fields a macro is run that generates your own customized "I can't live with this bum anymore" court filling.

Don't discount inertia

Now you could say it's easy enough to do this kind of thing with a shell script on a Linux system without the added expense of Word Perfect. However it took these people years to tune operations and learn WP to the point where this became a practical time saving prosedure. To move this operation to existing open source software would mean learning all these tricks again.

How important is the cost of changing ? Well these same lawyers buy new PCs preburdend with MSOffice 97 and promptly upgrade to Corel Perfect Office 8 or even 7 in order that they can keep using the same techniques. Sure those features are available on MSOffice and the learning curve from one Windows app to another is tiny compared to moving to traditional Unix tools. However an even lower cost is simply shelling out a hundred bucks for a CD from Corel.

Where does Linux fit?

Well with WP on Linux the barriers to entry become significantly lower for Lawyers. Simply put, a Penguin preloaded and configured with XDM, KDE, WP8 and Laserjet support has the same learning curve as moving up to a Dell with NT4 or 98 and WP8. With the massive reliability gap taken into consideration they could see Linux as a cost effective solution and another group joins ISPs and tech companies as Linux users.

Where does this leave the open source word processors ?

I see no reason to not continue aggressive development of the better GPLed Word Processors. K/LyX is moving well and there is talk of a serious contender from the Gnome camp. Maxwell, which shines among Linux apps has been GPLed with a flat request to "port it to Gnome and KDE" ( It's Motif based ). One of these will eventually become a challenger to WP across the board. By then Word Perfect will be accustomed to maintaining a quality lead that enables them to survive against a free challenger. In other words those without money or who attend "The church of Emacs" will have good WPs and the rest of us will have slightly better WPs.

Telling people to "accept the open source concept" if they want to use Linux or to "GPL all code that you will release on Linux" is completely pointless. Even RMS knows this which is why he wrote the LGPL.

This applies to the SQL people too.

Right now all but 2 of the large database makers are officially supporting their products on Linux. IBM programmers say a port is running in the lab ( I have no reason to doubt this for even a second ) and Microsoft would prefer to pretend Linux doesn't exist (let's return the favor :). Some months ago I argued that Oracle wouldn't ever port to Linux until they saw it as a "port or die" desision at which point they would start selling the DB for Linux they already have running in the labs. The reality is a little more impressive than the speculation. It seems all these vendors will be giving away products in order to establish market share. Is it just me or do other people think they are trying to get a significant piece of the Linux DB pie before it gets big?

Should we all just run out and buy these programs to show our support?

No. That's just crazy. Let the free market have it's say. There are evaluation versions of the better stuff floating around. If you find it's good enough to keep beyond the evaluation period then fork over the dough. That doesn't mean you need to wait out the full period however, just until you know it's a keeper. We should buy them if they are of some use to us. We should buy them if they are good. It's your money spend it wisely, you now have choices.

Joey Hess wrote in to tell us that Corel has made a Pre Release of WP8 available for anyone who is interested. School's startin' up again in a few weeks. I actually need to start writing papers again. Maybe this semester I'll consider writing papers in something besides HTML... :)

K-Man writes "In case anyone hasn't heard, Corel is offering special Comdex discounts on its new Netwinder. For example, a 64M/2.1G DM is going for $709 US, discounted from $889. The offer is over at end-of-day FRIDAY. That's tomorrow, 7/17. Call them to get prices; there's no mention on the website. "
The best list of phone numbers I could find is here.

Demon writes "Corel Corporation is extending its support and development commitment to the Linux operating system, currently being used by an estimated 7 million people worldwide. The award-winning software developer will release Corel® WordPerfect® 8 Personal and Server Editions for Linux this summer and plans to develop a suite of business applications for the Linux platform, More Info: link"

Cool stuff here folks... tons of cool people to chat with and cool toys to look at. Very much fun. The Corel folks are here showing off their NetWinder NC. It's so cute... seeing one only confirms my intsense desire to own one. Cobalt Micro is also here showing off their tiny little server. Yet another small monitorless computer that I really would like to own. By far the coolest machine is the various XTreme boxes. Paralogic has em From $6k to $60k, these bad boys run Linux, are the size of a refrigerator and, and clock in at up to 445 SPECint95's. Mommy? Can I have a super computer for christmas?

Corel is Cutting Costs on software these days. Garrett sent us this note. Ready for a crazy idea? Corel is the best company to try GPLing (or NPLing) their office suite. Think about it: WP already has a unix port, so it has appeal to typical FSF junkies. The primary issue here is how Corel can make money- Netscape has revenue from Servers, but WordPerfect is a major cash cow. Hit the link below to read about the latest concept in my damn foolish idealistic crusade.

The way I see it, Corel is losing market share fast, and they need a boost. GPLing their suite aligns them with the same audience that made Linux. This audience is growing into positions of purchasing power in many corporations. They need to release their suite- source code and all, but with a plug-in API and missing features (Thesaurus, Statistics Module, WordArt?) so that it was similiar in power to MS Works. The commercial version would essentially sell these modules to provide the remaining (less needed, but still important to business) features.

Maybe instead of a plug-in API Corelcould only charges businesses. There has got to be a reasonable way to make a profit at this. Free or heavily discounted software for home and educational use should be a cornerstone of any company anyway. Autodesk did this with Autocad, Apple did it with the Mac, even MS does it. This gets your foot in the door with the students and computer geeks who go to work and buy software.

I know there are other suites for Linux, but none of them are free, have available source, and have the ease of use and power that allows Corel a position similiar in the eyes of business to Microsoft Office. This would provide new users a good reason to use Linux, as well as promoting Corel. They would move tons of software- both on Unix (which needs a good word processor I need beer) and Windows (A GPLd office suite is perfect for all those companies riding the anti microsoft wave that has recently become so publicized).

So what do you guys think? I've seen plenty of Corel machines in my logs so somebody out there must have a connection.

Corel is Cutting Costs on software these days. Garrett sent us this note. Ready for a crazy idea? Corel is the best company to try GPLing (or NPLing) their office suite. Think about it: WP already has a unix port, so it has appeal to typical FSF junkies. The primary issue here is how Corel can make money- Netscape has revenue from Servers, but WordPerfect is a major cash cow. Hit the link below to read about the latest concept in my damn foolish idealistic crusade.

The way I see it, Corel is losing market share fast, and they need a boost. GPLing their suite aligns them with the same audience that made Linux. This audience is growing into positions of purchasing power in many corporations. They need to release their suite- source code and all, but with a plug-in API and missing features (Thesaurus, Statistics Module, WordArt?) so that it was similiar in power to MS Works. The commercial version would essentially sell these modules to provide the remaining (less needed, but still important to business) features.

Maybe instead of a plug-in API Corelcould only charges businesses. There has got to be a reasonable way to make a profit at this. Free or heavily discounted software for home and educational use should be a cornerstone of any company anyway. Autodesk did this with Autocad, Apple did it with the Mac, even MS does it. This gets your foot in the door with the students and computer geeks who go to work and buy software.

I know there are other suites for Linux, but none of them are free, have available source, and have the ease of use and power that allows Corel a position similiar in the eyes of business to Microsoft Office. This would provide new users a good reason to use Linux, as well as promoting Corel. They would move tons of software- both on Unix (which needs a good word processor I need beer) and Windows (A GPLd office suite is perfect for all those companies riding the anti microsoft wave that has recently become so publicized).

So what do you guys think? I've seen plenty of Corel machines in my logs so somebody out there must have a connection.