First Thoughts on Corel's Linux File Manager?

Conan Albrecht asks: "A lot of hype is being made about Corel's new Linux file manager (and its Windows look). Can those of us on other distributions try it out without installing Corel? Corel's site seems to expect users to burn an install CD. Is there another way? What comments do Corel Linux users have about the new file manager. How does it compare with KDE, GNOME, or others?"

Mounting the ISO

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to use the CD without burning it, download the ISO and type (as root):
mount corellinux-oc_1.0.iso /mnt/cdrom -t iso9660 -o loop

I wasn't impressed

[jfunk]

I tried it. I have the deluxe version and it doesn't make me want to switch from SuSE.

Corel has modified both QT and KDE for their own purposes. That breaks a lot of dependencies for installing software that didn't come with it. I tried using dselect to grab software that I use that didn't come with it. When I finally got the dependencies satisfied, I let it install the new packages and it broke my installation. KDE didn't work at all. Maybe there's something I don't know about the Debian package format, but it's not apparent. I stuck SuSE back on.

The file manager itself was slow and unstable for me. I was unable to connect to either Samba or NFS shares. It simply stopped or crashed whenever I tried to get somewhere. It's butt-ugly, too. The icons on the toolbar are way too big and tasteless.

On the bright side, I have a little Tux on my desk, a second copy of Civ:CTP, a second copy of OSS, and a huge load of fonts which alien helped me install.

Corel File Manager

[bergie]

Can those of us on other distributions try it out without installing Corel?

It is a .deb package, so at least users of Debian 2.1 (or Storm Linux 2000) should be able to run it, provided they have the needed libraries. I remember reading somewhere that Corel Linux included a copy of Qt that was modified by Corel, so it might not work with the regular Qt.
As to copyright issues in this, I'm not sure.

I'm sorry I can't provide any real details, as my copy of the (download version of) Corel Linux is in the office. I'll followup this tomorrow if I have time.

If you have the Corel CD available, try browsing around it and see what dpkg (or alien) says about the package.

What comments do Corel Linux users have about the new file manager. How does it compare with KDE, GNOME, or others?

It is pretty similar with KDE's file manager, although it felt slightly slower (as did everything in Corel Linux - possibly has something to do with the Qt modifications). Like KFM, it also has the capability to browse Web and FTP sites. However, its HTML viewing wasn't quite as good as the one in KDE 1.1.2 (judging from a sample of two or three sites i've tried with both).

Now, the idea of being able to browse NFS and Windows Networking shares with the same file manager without having to mount them first was quite nice. However, this was something that seemed to cause a lot of instability in the file manager. Mounting SMB shares didn't work in the version I tried, and trying to follow shortcuts created to SMB shared crashed the browser - which proceeded to take the whole OS with it (which I haven't yet seen any other app do in Linux!)

So, all in all, I think CFM showed lots of promise. I'd advise on waiting it mature a couple of versions before using it for production purposes, though.

/Bergie

--

corel fm and debian

[meridian]

I used the first corel filemanager on debian 2.2. I had problems with dependencies with other qt1g dependent packages. I could not seem to install both debian and corel qt, or all programs compiled against qt1 to work togther. I ended up making changes to /var/lib/dpkg/status file to allow things to install together. This did not help much. I am yet to try the newer version. Perhaps compiling the corel kde stuff against the debian qt libs would be the answer to getting it working. As far as wether or not it is worth the time, if your users are "windows users" then they will be much happier using corel, however i found the filemanager to be rather buggy for the first release.

Corel Linux

[Strepsil]

I got my little 'Open Circulation' CD in the mail just a couple of days ago, and have now had it running on my old Compaq Armada laptop for about 24 hours.

Now, I usually run my laptop on what started out as a RedHat 6 distribution, but has been heavily tweaked since. I use KDE by preference.

At first glance, Corel's hacked up Debian was really nice. The file manager was a definite plus - it worked flawlessly for me, browsing the NFS and Samba shares hanging off my household server. The old glitch that I got was when I accidentally clicked on the 'floppy' icon while the floppy drive wasn't in the machine.

kill -9 time. There didn't seem to be a 'nothing has happened yet' timeout.

Corel's patched KDE did address a lot of my pet hates in KDE though, such as not knowing when you've actually clicked on something. It was the 'switch the mouse pointer to "busy" briefly' path they chose, but it was a help. There were some other odds and ends that I found nice, which I hope get worked back into the core KDE code - but I'm not writing an essay here (I hope).

New nitpick - if you don't know your way around KDE and where to find all the files, I don't like your chances of adding new items to the 'start' menu. The KDE menu editor (which sucks, IMHO) isn't linked to the menu by default, and there are no pointers toward which bit of the filesystem holds all the .kdelnk files. BAD Corel.
(If I'm wrong about this, please point out the error of my ways).

As for the underlying system, it did look a bit messy, but that could be my inexperience with Debian in general. :) I'm going back to RedHat ... may the gods bless my copy of Ghost.

Summary: Corel have done a VERY excellent job on the UI side, and built a very nice file manager that I will try to work into my RedHat/KDE setup. The system itself has been neglected. I think they might have been better off just building a set of KDE packages that drop on top of a STANDARD Debian (or dare I say RedHat) system.

I'll give it a 6 out of 10, and I'm really interested in Corel Linux 2.0 if it happens. They have some great ideas ...