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Corel

WordPerfect Office 2000 For Linux Reviews 109

Posted by HeUnique from the check-this-out dept.
You may be wondering if you should purchase the WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux, since there isn't a downloadable version. Here are some reviews, which could assist you in making a decision. This is Canux review, and here you can find a review done by the people at Linux Weekly News. Also, you might want to take a look here -- you'll find comments from people who tried it (thanks to Linux Today). I hope someone from Corel is reading those articles and comments ...
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WordPerfect Office 2000 For Linux Reviews More

WordPerfect Office 2000 For Linux Reviews

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  • Non-latin1 support (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does anybody know, whether this office suite supports non-latin1 keyboards and fonts? (Eventually IMEs?)

  • The Rock says... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can someone explain to me why I would want to purchase a piece of proprietary Linux software? There are far better word processors available for free with the source code included such as Abiword and LaTeX. IMHO supporting any commercial software for Linux is detrimental the whole open source movement. Linux is the People's OS, and Corel can keep their profiteering proprietary software.

  • Why I would pay for an Office Suite.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The most important piece of software I have running in my office is based off of MS Access. AFAIK there isn't a good substitute on Linux that runs Access databases or is there? If MS were to release Office for Linux the Migration would start tomorrow... no wait today. The moment someone does come up with a solution I would pay for it (and that doesn't include running Access in Wine).

  • Re:It's not GPLed (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you're so obsessive about GPL and nothing else, you'd better wipe XFree86 off your machine, it's not GPL, maybe make sure Apache gets removed too. Why does everything have to be exactly GPL? I like having choice, thank you very much, even if some of the options don't include source.

  • Re:I was afraid of this (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    WPO2K was originally developed for Windows, so it makes business sense to port it using Wine. Maybe the next version of WP would be more native to Linux..?
    But think of it this way. WPO2K is probably the first major proof that Wine works (in the sense that a commercial vendor supports it). This may in turn encourage other Windows developer to port their apps to Linux, and hopefully later, supports Linux natively. Isn't that the goal of Wine? Corel is doing a lot ot help Wine, both in development and publicity.
  • Funny how most reviews of Linux software talk about whether or not the application crashes, how often and how badly it crashes and so on.

    If I may paint Linux people with as broad a brush as you have, it's probably because we are accustomed to our programs not crashing on us. I routinely have dozens of programs running on my system, and I switch among them easily, expecting them all to work. (This just makes me all the angrier when I'm running two or three apps on my Windows machine at work and one dies and takes the whole system down with it.)

    I guess Linux isn't the be all & end all of crash protection?

    Well, yes and no. The OS obviously can't keep other programs from crashing. It can, however, isolate the running programs from each other so that a chashing app doesn't affect any other part of the system.

    I KNOW that the OS isn't responsible for crashing applications - but to here Linux zealots talk you'd think windows IS responsible for every crashed windows app.

    Again, yes and no. For one thing, when programs at work crash, I regularly click the "details" button on the crash dialog box. I'd estimate that about half the time, the problem is within one of the system DLLs. Personally, I don't care that the source of the problem was probably data fed to a system function by the program. System libraries SHOULD NOT die as a result of user-supplied data. (Actually all libraries should follow that mantra, but system libraries especially.)

    Also, the OS should do a better job of isolating the crash than Windows does. If a Windows program crashes badly, it's likely to have messed up something in the running kernel, too. In many cases, a dying program can bring the entire system down with it. Accustomed as I have gotten to Linux's stability, this is no longer acceptable behaviour for me.

    So, no, Windows isn't really responsible for every crashed windows program, but the way it handles crashed apps is singularly awful.


    --Phil (Hypocracy? Slashdot is a huge community. We don't all hold the same views.)
  • Well, it's not all that bad actually. My only complaint is that after I installed it, for some reason it doesn't want to start properly from the menu in GNOME. Althought typing 'wordperfect&' seems to get it going alright. Setting up a printer isn't nearly as easy as WP8 was either. It _does_ look smooth & work well though. Haven't crashed it once yet. :-) -rl
  • 1. It doesn't run on PPC.
    2. It's proprietary software.
    3. How useful can it be if it lacks a built-in Lisp interpreter?

  • Then there's K-Office, which, my sources assure me, be available RSN. Even then, as a fairly immature suite of programs, I doubt KOffice will stack up to WordPerfect Office, at least initially, which has had years and years of polishing to make it what it is today.

    There are snapshots [kde.org] available now, if you want to try it out and hopefully make bug reports or feature requests. (Or contribute code!) Just remember that these are daily snapshots, not releases, and might or might not compile on any given day.
  • "WPO2K works on neither Suse nor Slackware and I am still waiting to hear back from their "free" email support. I guess it's easy to make it free by just not having anyone to respond.
    rob's page "

    WPO2K *can* be installed on SuSE 6.3. I did it, with excellent help
    from Gavriel State (gavriels@corel.com) and Avi Schwartz, plus some
    hints from the 'setup_log' that was created when my second, manual,
    attempt failed. The third attempt went fine and all the apps ran well,
    albeit slow on my P166 with 64MB of RAM. The F1 help key on any
    app alway fired my homepage, not the help. It was while I was
    using strace (thanks, AVI) to see what was going wrong that I
    saw some error msgs that caused me to decide to return the
    product and wait for the Linux *native* version.

  • never used Latex - generally I'll use Abi writing letters and Docbook if I need to do something longer - but in terms of functionality Abi can't beat a full blown WP. If you don't need a real WP that's fine but there is noting in the same league as Word/Word Perfect in the open source world.
  • Access is not just a file format (it uses the JET database by default though Access 2000 can use SQL Server). It is a database development environment.

    It uses Visual Basic for Applications and it's own unique style of SQL (mostly compatible).

    If you have an application running in Access it is not as simple as finding a program that can import the database tables (that's the easiest part). The hard part is getting your queries, forms, macros, and VBA code imported and working. And that is probably not going to happen when most suites can't even translate complex Excel formulas properly.

    Anyway, to switch to another database on Linux will require rewriting of code and time and debugging, and time, and lots of effort.
  • Actually, what you are is too lazy to change your password to something you can remember.

    Also, you would find, that if you enter your password and username just once, your browser will remember it, and you don't have to worry about it again.

  • I never got printing to work in the WP8 downloadable version. It seemed to have its own printer drivers, none of which it felt matched my printer, which is pretty annoying since I already had functional printer drivers that every other app was able and willing to use. If printing is more difficult in wp2000, I guess I won't bother.
  • Yeah,

    The poster before you is Gavriel. He is one
    of the lead software guru's at Corel, who incidentally works on wine if I'm not mistaken.
    *************************************** *****
    Superstition is a word the ignorant use to describe their ignorance. -Sifu
  • Interesting comment but your remark about Corel vs. Red Hat markey cap is way off... Please look at the NASDAQ today and tell me those valuations are accurate! Not even close.

    --hunter

  • Re:Ha! (Score:1)

    by Kyobu ( 12511 )
    Well, the downloadable version of WP8 has terrible fonts, though. No TTF support, you can't add your own Type 1 fonts, and there's only one serif variable-width font that isn't butt-ugly. Not so great. I still use it, because all the other Linux word processors suck even more, though. And I'm not going to pay $150 for a new version, just so I can have normal fonts. Why can't I just buy plain WordPerfect 9? i don't want Quattro Pro and all that crap!
  • Fine! So they can use whatever toolit they want! Use Motif, for all I care, even though it is hideously ugly. The point is, make it actually a Linux program.

  • Well, well. It seems like all the little brothers are falling over eachother in an attempt to get the baby brother's candy. (Ok fine, bad analogy) but all big brother bill has to do is start getting into this p*ssing contest and he'll win. I dont think it really matters who wins at this point. Microsoft (especially if it gets broken up) will move into this market and take it over in a heartbeat.

    I was going through a Linux hardware/software catalogue yesterday, and saw all this nice software available for a price equivalent to other platforms. It's really interesting to see all these companies attempt to take over a market like this.

    It's still useless. I write up something in WP8 or StarOffice, and i still cant give this document to my friends, or paper to the prof. I have to convert it to MS-Word for them to read it. And we all know how well the third party software writes to Ms-Word format...you'll have better luck with ASCII Art.

    It's interesting to see all this linux being sold everywhere and yet no where do i read of a major corporation actually using linux in the workplace.

  • Yeah, I know about the disk space (typically ~300MB), but how much memory
    does it need? IMHO, reviews of large software packages would be more useful
    if they included the RAM footprint of the running program(s). We would then
    have some idea -- beyond the subjective "it feels like" evaluations -- of
    the footprint. Would someone like to share his output of "top"? That would
    be much appreciated.
  • Hello all,

    I'm beta testing corel draw, and it seems to be about the same. Useable, but a little pokey, dos drive letters etc. It works though, and I can finally edit postscript etc. decently in Linux. Still beta though.

    These are all good first efforts. Give them a little time.

    I'm a little worried about programs with unavailable source, but I'm certainly going to use what I have to to do my work, until a decent free alternative comes up.

  • My girlfriend is an art student, and has several writing intensive classes this semester. Last night, while typing a paper, she lost a lot of steam due to how complicated MS Word is to use and understand conceptually (She had problems with adding footnotes where several of them reference the same source. Word munged her paper up pretty bad.)

    After seeing how frustrated it was for a non-technical person to use Word, I realized it is really not the right tool for her and others like her. Aside from the fact that Word is not just for typing up essays and is more a tool for advanced publishing / business folks, etc.

    Is there a good (preferably cheap/free to students) general word processor out there, with a good number of features (we just want footnotes, we don't need to embed the damn thing in a web page) but is *really* simple to learn and use?

    I thought about MS Works, but I hate the lesser-of-two-evils deal.

    thanks in advance.

    robert

  • In all fairness I gotta mention there is a Make It Fit equivalent (well I haven't functionally compared the two, but I've used them both) wizard in MS-Office. I've not seen Office 2000 but in Office97 it's one of the buttons on the Print Preview screen. (I'm not near a copy of Office now or I'd describe better. Float thru the tooltips to find "Make it fit".)

    Dunno why it's so hidden in Word -- AFAIK that's the only way to find it -- and I think WordPerfect 6 did it first, but MS-Office does have this feature.
    __________

  • Corel's decision to write what is basically Windows code and run it on Linux under Wine strikes me as odd. Considering that Corel already has a native-Unix base product (in WordPerfect 8), why not extend that to be WP Office 2000, native under Linux? Corel has already bet the farm on linux anyway, so this would strike me as a sensible choice. If you still wanted to have your app run on Windows to compete against MS, why not just run your Linux app (recompiled, but still using X) locally through a Windows X-server such as Exceed or MI/X?

    This way, you leverage your position in the linux marketplace, giving the technical users what they want, while still having a product to ship to the Windows market, where people are less likely to be aware of whether they're running an emulated app or not, as long as it works. Not only that, but products such as Exceed are much more stable and useful for this kind of development than using Wine to run Windows apps on Linux.

    Makes no sense to me
  • Emm it's not the windows binary!
    It's compiled against Wine!
    Anyway Corel are only using this as a temporary measure and have said they are working on native versions.
  • It says 32MB on the box, but I've only used it on systems with 80MB and 128MB. (The 80MB system was a P133, actually, and it runs as well on that as on my P200).<p>

    FWIW, wine's VSS is usually about 56MB.
  • 2) No one has mentioned what level of M$ office file compatibility is there. Such as Office 97 or Office 2000.

    According to the presentation at the roadshow, MS Office 97 and MS Office 2000 (at least for Word) use the same file format. They demonstrated reading and writing Excel2000 and Word2000 files with Quattro and Wordperfect and for their chosen examples it looked like it worked fine. They also demonstrated that the file size using Quattro was significantly smaller than the same file under Excel, so you might prefer using Quattro's format anyway.
  • I am definitely a DBA, but is there any hope to use MS's stuff to migrate access files for use on SQL? Is that any more cross platform?

    matt
  • Worst Product ever. The installer only works on Redhat and Corel linux. It looks like Corel desided not to take the little time to test
    on the many other popular distos like SuSE, Caldora, Slackware, and others. There are many people out there who have paid $150 for this
    mocked up buggy windows software, and have to struggle to even get it installed.

    After getting it installed. Having to install all the rpms by hand, and figure out the correct oder to avoid dependancy errors. moving the files that where installed in redhat/corel specific places, such as .kdelnks. I find that it cant open most of my Office 2000 documents.
    It says unknown format. My copy of staroffice 5.1 which is pretty old, has no problems.

    Also, the email address on Corels web page linux_install@corel.com must go to /dev/nul .... I wrote an email 2 days ago, and have gotten nothing
    back, not even an autoresponder.

    Thank you corel for raping me. Nice piece of windows crap running under wine. At least I got a 2 inch stuffed tux for my $150.

    Jon

  • OK.... Applixware is very bad, but atleast it trys to open the documents, and at least its native linux code and not crap running under wine.

    As far as MS Office, Its good for windows, but there is no linux port, and Im not going to switch OSes for a work processor.

  • The installer did not run under Debian.
    However, dselect had no problem installing the .deb files from the cd.

    I'd give you a review of the package,
    but I've been too busy playing Railroad Tycoon II.

  • Star Office isn't worth the money you pay for it!
  • Can someone explain to me why I would want to purchase a piece of proprietary Linux software? There are far better word processors available for free with the source code included such as Abiword and LaTeX.

    Because you can! Or, conversely, why would someone use LaTeX if Corel WordPerfect is available. And it's the same answer, because they can! The more options the better, everybody can use whatever method they wish to compose/edit documents, and each respective person is happy. Nobody is forced to use software they don't want to. Everybody wins.

    MHO supporting any commercial software for Linux is detrimental the whole open source movement. Linux is the People's OS, and Corel can keep their profiteering proprietary software.

    I don't know if you're trolling here, or if you're just that close-minded. Basically, the more options that are available on Linux, the better. If you personally don't like the software, or are politically disinclined towards it, then don't buy or use it. However, many other people would like a fully-featured WYSIWYG word processor, and wouldn't mind paying some money for it. I think there is lots of potential for open-source and commercial software to work/play together. However, limiting oneself to either extreme doesn't do much good (IMHO, of course).

  • I personally do not use Linux because it's free, or GPL. I use it because it's stable, runs faster on my slower hardware, and because I hate microsoft.

    Stick to your GPL principals if you must, but don't bitch about others making their own choice of software because it happens to be closed-source.
  • WPO2K works on neither Suse nor Slackware and I am still waiting to hear back from their "free" email support. I guess it's easy to make it free by just not having anyone to respond.

    If they GPL'd their code, they'd have a much better product alot sooner. They probably say they won't give it away to protect their revenue stream or the value of their company. But Red Hat's market cap is ten times greater than Corel's, they've been around a tenth as long, and their software is available for free (beer and speech).

    It looks like Corel is just more afraid of figuring out a new business plan. That's too bad, because nobody wins in the closed source game. Certainly not my company, with a hundred dollar so-far worthless CD. Certainly not Corel, who's been competing with and losting to Microsoft forever, and then someone like Red Hat passes them by like they were standing still.

    Figure it out, Corel. You aren't going to win at this game, and please don't claim that you are supporting linux or free software in general while you are trying. You can GPL the product and make money, just figure out how.

    I'm only writing this because my operating system needs an office package that works. It's probably better to wait for someone to improve gnumeric and magicpoint and integrate them with latex.

  • "quote.yahoo.com/q?s=corl&d=t" says the market cap for Corel is 545.3M.<p>

    "quote.yahoo.com/q?s=rhat&d=t" says the market cap for Red Hat is 4.759B.<p>

    That's the factor of ten I mentioned. Maybe I'm reading the web page wrong or looking at the wrong column. But at least now I've cited my sources.
  • I've purchased the Deluxe version of WordPerfect 2000 for Linux and I love it. It is quicker and stabler than Star Office and it is easier to use.

    The new font server that comes with it is awesome and has not caused any of my applications to crash. As for people complaining about Netscape, I'm running the netscape binary from netscape and not WP, and it's working just fine with the new TrueType fonts.

    Just because a software package is not free, doesn't mean that it can't be benificial to Linux. This mindset is just going to alienate Linux from the mainstream user. Remember too that the Corel Wine team will be making their changes to wine available open source at some point in the near future.
  • R5 improved printer support dramatacally - and there's a third party driver called BinkJet that adds much more support.

    "The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
  • Try Gobe Productive [gobe.com] - it's what I use for all my stuff, and it has a good feature set. I paid about $80 from Buy.com in a bundle with the BeOS bible and BeOS R4.5, though you don't need R4.5 with FreeBe out there.

    "The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
  • Actually, wpo2000 for linux is not a linux port of an office suite but an office suite port of wine.
  • I have it installed on a couple machines at the office and at home. It is working ok for us. I have to say it is a big improvement over what was available before.
  • take a look at abiword (it's linked from gnome.org somewhere) or lyx. [lyx.org] both these do a lot of nifty stuff without being bloated.

    jon

  • As a high school student at a school where teachers often still give assignments with a minimum length measured in pages, the MakeItFit feature is wonderful. If I'm a few lines over, instead of spending ten or fifteen minutes trimming stuff out (and cutting my mark), I just tell it to MakeItFit. Also handy for when you're just one or two lines onto the next page.


    -RickHunter

  • > the guy reviewing for canux is a complete
    > idiot, how can he get a job?

    From that review I could see that a non-technical person would have about ZERO chance of getting the product (CorelLinux+CorelWPO) installed on their PC. That says all that needs to be said. Sure, if you're a hacker, you're not their demographic. You're happy writing LaTeX preprocessor output in VI or EMACS. Go away already, okay? In thinking you're so clever, you have revealed your stupidity. Ironic, no?

    Some people just want to turn on their computer and use it. Those people should probably (honestly) just get an iMac and Claris Works and say 'nuts to linux, nuts to Windows too'. Neither one is Nirvana for Neophytes. Neither is the Mac either, but at least it's consistent and useable.

    Warren Postma
  • What's to stop it being installed on one
    machine but have everyone just run it over X?
    Does it create a lockfile or something so it refuses to run more than once?
    Does it simply refuse to run over a network?
    If so could you use VNC (and maybe multiple displays) to get one or more people using the one install!

    ------------------------------------------------ -
    "If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -

  • Well, I appreciate your response - but I can, do, and OFTEN run MathCAD under wine. As for finite element modelling software - Being able to buy MathCAD at a student discount is STILL a good deal cheaper than that stuff! So, sadly I have no experience with running it under wine.

    Although I must agree that WinAMP isn't exactly math-intensive; - it doens't use that much CPU - but it does demonstrate WINE's ability to handle the custom pointers, sound I/O, in my case, the proprietary DSP plug-ins, etc.

    But I do have a great deal of experience running Mathcad under wine - I would rather take my chances with wine crashing it (which I admit does happen) than to take the several minutes to boot to windows. You gotta admit - windows takes WAY too long to boot.

    And for insulting Anonymous Cowards - If you took that as an insult fine. It was more of an observation (however insulting) than a direct insult. I believe in free speech, and that's alot of what slashdot/OSS is about - but I also believe that in having the privelege of free speech comes with responsibility for what you say. Which is why I have little respect for Anonymous Cowards - as I said; most of the AC's (not all... but most) are guilty of trolling/spouting 'misinformed crap' as you said. They take their anonymity as a way to get away from 'taking credit' - good or bad - for their words. And, as a result, alot begin to become less honest in their use of 'free speech.' Is it a right? Sure. But just because it IS a right to spew whatever you want, doesn't MAKE IT RIGHT. Of course, right/wrong is subjective; ask any philosopher. But purposeful misinformation to try to deceive others into your point of view is generally considered wrong.

    Sigh. But, believe me - I DO run mathcad under wine. I am on the unstable branch of Debian - which while not exactly as fresh as CVS code, it is still quite recent.

    The fact that I do sign my name (and my email? I'm not sure about that. I'll have to check the setting...) should say that I WILL stand behind my words, and prove them as I may. I try very hard not to spout about things in general - espescially when I may be ignorant about it. But, I do know that I can run MathCad under WINE - the recent version(s), and while not without its bugs, WINE is still an excellent product. Not complete... but so is M$ Windows (Insert your version here).
  • I don't know why, but everytime I see an 'anonymous coward' talking trash about anything on /., I take it with one huge grain of salt. In my experience, most of the time it's somebody with some outright LIE and FAIRY TALE about something they either don't like or dissaprove of.

    Maybe it's because I own the product, and these so-called problems really aren't. I espescially like the part about segfaults - When a WINE-emulated program crashes, it doesn't segfault.

    And - the fact that WPO2k uses wine doesn't mean it's a windows program. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Corel USED WINE to shorten the porting process a few hundred-fold. While as a result, some of it runs slower, they've got the product out the door. You can bet the next version of WordPerfect Office will be Linux-Native.

    Besides - 'anonymous coward' here obviously hasn't used WINE much, since it actually does work quite well- when you can run an extrememly math and font-intenive program like MathCad, Winamp, etc using WINE, there isn't something wrong with WINE.

    On an interesting note about another reason why WP actually WAS ported to linux, unlike my dear coward purports - The Windows version of WPO2k doesn't run at all under wine. The use of wine just made it easier to port to Linux.

    In short, the anonymous cowards comments are a farcical tale of an experience that never happened. I chalk this one up to somebody who doesn't like the fact that it is either Corel's product, a 'Closed Source' product, or both. Nothing more.
  • I dont know about WP7 but I have installed WP8 on multiple systems and in many cases, programs like Corel Central would not even run (crash at launch time). I have had all these problems on fresh installs of Win95 and Win98 so there's nothing wrong with MS theorically breaking stuff.
  • I was always a strong supporter non-M$ alternatives even when I was using win32. I presently own a copy of WP8 suite for Win32 and it'a as much a peice of crashware as WP2k seems to be. The WordPerfect office suite is a very buggy code base that is dragged on and on endlessly... even in native win32, it sucks ass. If Netscape had chosen to keep it's codebase from communicator and it would be at version 8, it would probably compare well to the kind of crashware that WP is. Corel's office suite if not a victim of Microsoft's dominance, it'a victim of it's constant lack of quality. Even after an endless drivel of patches, the thing is a unstable as hell.

    It hangers me to see that Corel is so underestimating the intelligence and integrity of the community. Especially a crowd so technically savy and used to good software as us. Corel is no better that Microsoft. If it can make the wordPerfect proprietary file format uniquitous on Linux, they will. As a matter of fact it's their plan exactly. Corel is a conveniance vendor. For the permission to install and use their products, you have to give away some of your freedom. By using their file formats, you are blocking non-Corel product owners out of the information you saved in it.

    On the other hand, much of the new users that come from the Windows world dont get the ethical and practical values of free software and are more than ready to part with their money and freedom for a little convenience. Geez. I only started using Linux when Red Het 5.1 came out and I already feel like one of those bearded free software advocates when I compare myself to the average slashdotter these days. I remember a time when threads here were about a mouvement of hackers that stood for something that has a higher meaning than conveniance, market share and stock value.

    Where have all the philosophers gone? Have we let ourselves be pushed out of our place of gathering by the exact mentality from which we soth refuge?

  • Is html not a suitable method for transfering files (i.e. if it musn't be printed exactly), and if it must, Corel WP02000 suppports saving files as pdfs. What more do you want?
  • Can you spell pirate?
  • all i have to say is if you are develpoing linux software, at least make sure its linux native, and doenst need some emulator to run !
    This kind of stuff is negative for the linux on desktop market.


    "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT"-Death
  • before posting a comment.

    The first review actually showed that it didn't work with Corel's own distribution but did with Redhat.

  • Good points:) I'm an ass and the reviews were crap.
  • I saiiid ODBC or WORSE (implying they generally DO use DAO because thats the spiffy VB way of life. And anyways find a totally functional implmentation of ODBC in linux and your doing something, Ive seen a ODBC driver that.. was almost there but no cigar for real work.

    Jeremy
  • Word files will not open in WordPerfect or most other word processors if the Word files are fast-saved, which is the Word default setting. Fast-saved Word files are not formatted; they just throw the edits into an area near the top of the file.

    Moral of the story: if you want Word files to be portable, find the Word fast-save setting and disable it.
  • I know. Its disgraceful the way Corel visit people and hold a gun to their head until they agree to buy WordPerfect!
  • I was surprised by this review, which read like so much flamebait. I've used WP Office on Corel and Red Hat Linux, and it works well (not having crashed even once). I find it very usable on a Cyrix PR200, although Wine has a tendancy to scan (and time-out on) every empty CD-ROM drive in the system; With CDs inserted, the apps start up in reasonable time. If WordPerfect doesn't work with his/her pet flavor of Linux, too bad. Linux distros are missing *SO* many services that mature apps rely on, and Corel is not going to sit around waiting for a standards group to set things straight. Corel is adding necessary functionality to Linux as they go (witness their involment in extending Linux printer support), but they can't write code to retrofit every distro. Most Linux distros are hideous, sprawling, inconsistent masses. And every major player who lumps in a new technology thinks they have bettered Linux. But thank goodness they're wrong; Linux consists of the kernel and nothing more until standards for various levels of functionality are set. These emperors are wearing no clothes. When people try to intimidate users with the implication they're running "crippled" Linux unless they have at least 4 or 5 scripting languages installed, at least I know better. Think of all the people who lumped their pet tools into Linux distros just to support their quick-and-dirty, user-unfriendly contributions. Why should Corel be lambasted for making their own additions and making their own apps dependant on them? Those OS additions are available to the community just like the other pet technolgies (which are often less usable anyway). IMO, the opinions offered in the LWN article are entirely incredible. The reviewer was not honest enough to describe the distro in use (Corel only supports a finite number, you know) or the modifications it contains, *or* to admit they were working from a particular brand of Linux conventional-wisdom. He/she also didn't acknowledge X-Windows' shortcomings as a source of GUI problems (lack of support for modal windows and dialogs, for instance). This is why the LinuxWorld review, in contrast, was much more fair and ultimately more positive toward WP Office. They stated the distros and mods being used, and gave Corel credit for extending Linux up to the task of serving a mature application.
  • I was surprised by this review, which read like so much flamebait.

    I've used WP Office on Corel and Red Hat Linux, and it works well (not having crashed even once). I find it very usable on a Cyrix PR200, although Wine has a tendancy to scan (and time-out on) every empty CD-ROM drive in the system; With CDs inserted, the apps start up in reasonable time.

    If WordPerfect doesn't work with his/her pet flavor of Linux, too bad. Linux distros are missing *SO* many services that mature apps rely on, and Corel is not going to sit around waiting for a standards group to set things straight. Corel is adding necessary functionality to Linux as they go (witness their involment in extending Linux printer support), but they can't write code to retrofit every distro.

    Most Linux distros are hideous, sprawling, inconsistent masses. And every major player who lumps in a new technology thinks they have bettered Linux. But thank goodness they're wrong; Linux consists of the kernel and nothing more until standards for various levels of functionality are set. These emperors are wearing no clothes. When people try to intimidate users with the implication they're running "crippled" Linux unless they have at least 4 or 5 scripting languages installed, at least I know better.

    Think of all the people who lumped their pet tools into Linux distros just to support their quick-and-dirty, user-unfriendly contributions. Why should Corel be lambasted for making their own additions and making their own apps dependant on them? Those OS additions are available to the community just like the other pet technolgies (which are often less usable anyway).

    IMO, the opinions offered in the LWN article are entirely incredible. The reviewer was not honest enough to describe the distro in use (Corel only supports a finite number, you know) or the modifications it contains, *or* to admit they were working from a particular brand of Linux conventional-wisdom. He/she also didn't acknowledge X-Windows' shortcomings as a source of GUI problems (lack of support for modal windows and dialogs, for instance). This is why the LinuxWorld review, in contrast, was much more fair and ultimately more positive toward WP Office. They stated the distros and mods being used, and gave Corel credit for extending Linux up to the task of serving a mature application.

  • Can someone explain to me why I would want to purchase a piece of proprietary Linux software? How do you expect Linux to survive and grow? It's going to have non open source software so businesses can profit. I'd rather have open source software, but if it's a good stable product I'll purchase it. It's great we alternatives like LaTeX and Abiword, but if Corel is going to pull many other businesses in with the office suite, so be it. It's great IMHO.

    What's next? Open source hardware? This way we can have a totally 'free' computing enviorment? ;)

  • This is a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it anyway so I understand it better.
    If Corel's Office suite is a Wine app, does this mean it will natively run under Windows? It sounds like a Windows version packaged with all the dll's and scripts for the WINE package....
  • I'm in the Beta program as well. One minor thing. With a fresh install of RedHat 6.2 and a fresh install of CorelDRAW/CorelPAINT it claims there is no font server running, tries to run it's own and then crashes with a "Program has encountered an error." message. I sent that in and have tried to get it running ever since with no luck. *sigh*

    Now that I've seen it's a wine app, I'm not quite as enthusiastic as I was. Native, please make this native. Is anyone at Corel listening? Or open source it :)
  • No, it's a full version. I've not seen anything other than fewer pics and fonts in the download version than in the $39.95 "personal" version.

    WP8.0 works great. Better than vi (if that's possible) for text.
  • before making a complete ass of yourself. I was replying to a guy that claimed he had very few problems with the suite AND was using Corel's distro.

    Oh BTW, I did read the reviews and they were almost completely contradictory. One described all sorts of problems and the other was a blowjob for Corel in which the reviewer oooh'd and aaah'd over the box, blew away his sytem TWICE to get it running and then proceeded to gush about how great it was.

  • So Corel Office works great with Corel Linux but people that run other distros are having lots of problems? Gee that rings a bell...
  • Win4Lin allows you to actually install Windows 9x on your Linux system onto the ext2 file system. You run your own copy of Windows as a process under Linux. You then install Office or whatever your *must have* app is and off you go. Now you can run W9x apps on a secure file system without NT. This is supposed to be a middle solution in between VMWare and Wine. I'm going to try this out with Win95 OSR2 and Office97 and see how it flies.
    If it works out I have some customers in mind...
    Information at www.trelos.com.

    If I have made more money than other men it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants while my legal team imprisoned and castrated them.
    -Billy Hank Windows III
  • is largely useless so why would the linux version be any different. In my office Corel office 2K is the standard suite. WordPerfect is actually quite good and I like it, fonts are good, it exports to pdf, VBA, and more import/export filters that you can imagine. Althought it's not often I have to import WordStar 1.0 files.

    Having said that the rest of the suite is almost completely useless. Quatto Pro in particular is just plain evil. I read those reviews and it sound like the short comings aren't a result of moving the suite to linux, these problems existed in Windows as well.

    All this is too bad I really wanted Corel to do a really good job on this. However that's not to say that they still can't, it's still early yet.

  • Hehe, Wordstar. Making vi seem user friendly since 1986 :)
  • Can someone explain to me why I would want to purchase a piece of proprietary Linux software?

    Because you might find the product (not necessarily Corel Office) useful, functional, and productive, and wish to support the programmers efforts in the hopes that they will support your new program, and perhaps one day release a new, better version.

    Open source does not equal free. If you think no one should pay for Linux apps, that the freebie alternatives are sufficient, fine. This attitude will ensure that Linux never breaks into mainstream corporate and home use, and remain confined to the niche market that it is today.

    Let's face it: Betty in HR isn't going to switch to Linux until she is given an easy way to convert all those old Word documents seemlessly; Uncle Bob isn't going to switch until he can walk into CompUSA and buy TurboTax/Photoshop/Falcon 5.0/whatever for Linux off the shelf. These products are created by software companies, and those companies want sales. What motivation do they have for creating new and unique native Linux applications if they are expected to give it away for free?
  • The one review from Linux Weekly talks about how it crashes all the time. The one from Linux today from says it's relatively stable. Anyone care to comment on stability from experience? Could it run better on some distro's (Corel's own?) and not others?

  • that canux review is terrible (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the guy reviewing for canux is a complete idiot, how can he get a job?

    "True to my hacker nature, I tried it again. Same thing (go figure...)" sure sounds like quite a hacker, re-running the install script(which i bet he wouldn't have even been able to find without kfm), how devious.

    when the install got to hard for him, which was when he needed to install some debs, he gave up and tried it in redhat. how pathetic(not redhat, the idiot)

    and he says redhat "botched the X Server install" but i'm guessing this mental midget just goofed(that would be a real surprize). What is the point of having a guy who has no clue what he's doing write a review?

    besides how smart can a guy be if he's using kde?

  • Re:I was afraid of this (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Corel is not selling the windows version + Wine.
    It's using Winelib to port it's application which is VERY different

    Try actually, you know, looking at the software they shipped. They may be planning on eventually transitioning to winelib, but right now they are very much just running a modified Windows app (all the print stuff has been ripped out and shoved into a native Linux app) under wine. Look at, for example, /usr/bin/wordperfect. It's a shell script which, contrary to your nonsense about WineLib, fires up WINE to run the Windows wordperfect binary.

  • Promising, but slow and unstable (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just bought the deluxe version and installed
    it a few days ago on my PII266/128MB/RH6.1/KDE
    system. I've used Corel's apps at work on NT
    and enjoyed that, so I was really looking
    forward to running them on my linux box at home.

    The install went fine and after restarting KDE,
    I was eager to check the apps out. My first impression was dissapointment. By all means; the
    apps look very promising, but they are also very
    unstable. I've mostly used WP9 and Quattro so far,
    and my experience is that they crash a lot and are
    generally sluggish (compared to WP8 which I also
    have).

    The real-time-preview of fonts on selections,
    for example, is simply intolerably slow. When
    scrolling through documents (imported from Word97,
    no graphics or OLE stuff - but some tables) WP9
    will sometimes just hang forever, while other
    times it will non-permanently hang for several seconds.

    There's also some weird graphical errors
    sometimes, like menus that wont go away or pop
    up at strange locations.

    As it is now I dare not use WP9 for anything
    important in fear of a crash or hang. I suppose
    some or all of this will be fixed with
    new versions of the WINE server they use to run
    the apps. Have anyone else had the same
    experiences? Or is it something with my system?
    If this is how it is for everybody, then there
    can only be one conclusion: This isn't production
    quality, Corel!

  • The reviews are too kind. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out the corelsupport newsgroups. People are not too happy.

    It screwed the fonts on my system. Guess that's why it came with its own version of Netscape. Now, anything that uses any fonts freezes when I open it.

    Also, I can't open files that are on NFS. Well, isn't that an annoying little bitch. I have to copy them locally, edit them, then remember to copy them back so that I don't end up with multiple versions.

    And don't forget the fact that it isn't really linux code... they just managed to get it to run on Wine. How lame.

    The apps have an enormous issue with insisting on being on top. They seem to have some special layer all to themselves. I have to lower them several times for them to be the same as other apps.

    But, check out the newsgroups. There are plenty of complaints. I didn't see anyone in the reviews really post the problems with it.
  • Downloadable == Evaluation? Limited features version? stuff like that..
  • This always comes up.

    There's a "ps passthru" printer, which works great for sending postscript output to lpd and on through to your printer just about every distribution.

    Chances are good that if you have a working printer with Red Hat, Debian, Corel, Mandrake, or many other modern distros, you need to go ahead and use the passthru driver. I've used WP8 this way on every distro of Red Hat from 5.1 to 6.1, and Debian 2.1 (Slink).


    ------------
    Michael Hall
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • Okay, what about FileMaker Pro? Our office runs a large FileMaker Pro database where we get our jobs from. Computer problems are reported to the office staff who enter them in the database and we retrieve them from there, enter stuff, etc. I can't ditch Windows until I can access FileMaker databases. :)
    ---
  • So, I was asking about the WINE emulation, and someone emailed me saying he had a native Linux WP2K. Not WP2K Office. Just WP2K. I can't find any trace of it on their site or anything, but I'd love to have one, because I mostly want this for my BSD boxes. :)

    Anyone heard anything like this?
  • the guy reviewing for canux is a complete idiot, howcan he get a job? If you could actually READ it. It appears to be down??? (/.ed?)
  • Wordperfect 8 is a completely free (& small) download. It's actually very good and suffices for 90% of the things I want to do.
    I bought WPO2K4L deluxe immediately when it came out. It's really miles ahead of anything else available for Linux and comparable to MS office.
    I actually find wordperfect more intuitive.
  • There is no appreciable performance difference between applications using WineLib and applications run using the WINE binary loader. The *only* distinction is in the way the code is initially loaded - with an ELF binary linked to WineLib, it's loaded by ld.so; with a Windows .EXE binary, it's loaded by WINE's loader.

    WINE based apps are no less 'native' than QT or GTK apps - they're all using an API layer on top of plain Xlib. It's just that WINE's API happens to be identical to the MS Win32 API. There's no CPU or other hardware emulation involved - just the loader and the implementation of the APIs.
  • I'm baffled by all the people who recommend AbiWord as a word processor that's usable now. It looks extremely alpha to me. Like if you ever click in the Font Size box, you can never get the cursor out of it, so that you can type but the dropdown list pops up every time you hit the spacebar. And there are all those neat menu option, but all but about 5 of them point to a dialog box saying "This feature isn't here yet". And it doesn't support TrueType fonts.

    LyX is good, though.
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.
  • 1) This package is not listed as compatible with Linux compatibility modes. So does it work on BSD, SCO, Solaris?

    2) No one has mentioned what level of M$ office file compatibility is there. Such as Office 97 or Office 2000.

    If it is not Office 2000 file-compatible, what will an upgrade cost?

  • That recursive acronym should explain it sufficiently. So what you really mean by "native" here means using typical Linux libraries instead of a wrapper redirecting Windows API calls to Linux and X. Frankly, I don't see the point of writing every application specifically for every platform. However, I see the point that a Windows-centric wrapper is not the ideal solution to cross-platform porting.

    - Steeltoe
  • Good point for the wrong reasons. You can get StarOffice for free and while it is different from both MS Office and WordPerfect you can do all the same stuff. I have never tried it but according to the blurb you can import access db files into StartOffices different (read wierd!) database. So the problem is solved. On a different note. Id you want a PC to run MS Office then no one does it better than NS. The move to linux is happening in a major way on the server side, and, is begining to take off on the desktop side because people are realising that that bloatware, feature creep endless pointless upgrades are not where its at. When the next generation of LINUX apps based on GNOME components comes available. Lots of simple, elegent widgets that interact with each other in intelligent ways -- then all these "suites" and monolithic products are going to look seriously tired. We may even improve on the origonal Xerox desktop. (Anyone who ever used ViewPoint software on a Xerox workstation will remember just how good it was compared with the current generation of GUIs).
  • What makes GTK better than any of the other widget-sets out there?

    Oh yeah - open-source purists like it because it's not QT. Not because of any particular advantage, but because it's NOT QT. And yet, Stallman himself gave the stamp of approval for QT-2. Hmmm.

    The whole 'USE GTK' thing is more a personal preference thing than anything else. There aren't any advantages of GTK over QT, except that GTK is the baby of the GNOME camp.

    Both will work for Windows (although QT is more stable in Windows than GTK), and the use of either is a fine choice to do development for BOTH windows and Linux.

    Either way - Corel is part of the KDE camp. This says one thing: QT and KDE. Honestly, I have no bias towards GNOME or KDE, but also don't let years-old rumors and accusations cloud my judgement.

    I look foreward to the day where GNOME and KDE work together well. The day is coming - in my experience the only 'bitter rivalry' between the GNOME camp and the KDE camp are the non-programmers who spend more time debating ideology than technology. The programmers are only interested in getting them to work and play nice.
  • That was all insightful and stuff but you missed his point GeZ117.

    To wit, he needs something that will allow his apps which need (specifcally) MS Access to function. These apps probably use ODBC or worse to communicate with Access so the needs are not for an open source database but something to replace Access not a work alike but an exact replacement as far as the database end goes (not front end)

    But until then I appreciate what these projects are doing.(Katabase and Gnome-DB)

    Jeremy
  • To wit, he needs something that will allow his apps which need (specifcally) MS Access to function. These apps probably use ODBC or worse to communicate with Access so the needs are not for an open source database but something to replace Access not a work alike but an exact replacement as far as the database end goes (not front end)

    Well, if he's using ODBC, whose sole purpose in life is to provide a database-independent abstraction layer, he can just swap out Access for something else. That's the whole point of ODBC. Unless his apps rely on some obscure functionality that only Access provides. You might be thinking of DAO, which, to my knowledge, is tied to Microsoft databases (SQL Server and Access).

    Herbie J.

  • > The most important piece of software I have running in my office is based off of MS Access. AFAIK there isn't a good substitute on Linux that runs Access databases or is there? If MS were to release Office for Linux the Migration would start tomorrow... no wait today. The moment someone does come up with a solution I would pay for it (and that doesn't include running Access in Wine).

    Look for GNOME-DB [gnome.org] or wait for Katabase [kde.org], included in KDE2 (release in July -personnal estimation). There are always linux solutions!

  • Re:I was afraid of this (Score:3)

    by Juju ( 1688 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @02:35AM (#1136190)
    Corel is not selling the windows version + Wine.
    It's using Winelib to port it's application which is VERY different

    The application is recompiled for Linux.
    Here is an extract from WineHQ's web site:
    Wine provides both a development toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program loader, allowing unmodified Windows 3.1/95/NT binaries to run under Intel Unixes.

  • WPOffice for Linux: the Paradox (Score:3)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @05:33AM (#1136191) Journal
    First, becaus the thing is not native it is going to be a bit buggy and I think Corel will learn quick that it is best to go native. Also, somebody give me a reason to EVER go and buy a product the minute it comes out. Even Corel that typically makes a much better product than M$ still has kinks to work out of the first product. I will wait till the next version or at least till some reasonable patch releases come out.

    What is funny is the reaction from the community. I hear people blinding touting the idea of bringing Linux to the desktop and to the common user. Yet, they fuss when a major software player like Corel wants to make a product for Linux and expects people to -gasp!- pay for it. WTF?

    Catch a clue people. Most end lusers are not download slackware, configure Gnome without ever asking for help (go help the newbie that asks a Linux user for help), and then download a laundry list of GPL office programs and tries to compile each one themselves (only wimps use RPMs or deb packages after all). The laundry list of dependency errors alone would drive them insane. They would be old and gray before they downloaded the lib packages and kill themselves in the end before they realized it was not worth it.

    Our community needs to stop waffling between the extremes and figure out once and for all do we want to be the geek man's favorite home system/server OS or do we want to be the everyman's productivity tool? If we want to be all things to all people we are going to have to make some concessions. People like buying pretty boxes with CDs that they can pay for, install and expect to get support for from a big name. The geek in us all may hate that but it is true.
  • Well, yeah, its all fun and games till someone gets hurt, right?

    Remember, this is a platform that has gone without a really good, polished commercial office suite for a long time.

    WordPerfect 8 is nice, but hardly an office suite. StarOffice isn't bad if you don't mind the occasional X server crashes and poor compatibility with M$ Office documents (WP8 is worse on that count, though) and the massive BLOATWARE effect.

    Then there's K-Office, which, my sources assure me, be available RSN. Even then, as a fairly immature suite of programs, I doubt KOffice will stack up to WordPerfect Office, at least initially, which has had years and years of polishing to make it what it is today. (Well, from the review, it looks like KOrganizer smokes WPO's PIM on network functionality, but there is more to an office suite than a PIM).

    But hey, if you want to stick with open source and need true power, there's always vi and TeX! :)

  • I attanded the Corel WP 2000 roadshow (Score:3)

    by toofast ( 20646 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @01:43AM (#1136193)
    And I must say I'm quite impressed with what Corel's pumping out for Linux. I myself ordered WP 2000 Deluxe (including Paradox) and I anxiously await it. The apps are really seamless and integrated. The perfmance seems a bit off, tho, because of Winelib.

    I'm currently beta-testing Corel DRAW and PhotoPAINT for Linux (photopaint being my favorite graphics proggie) and even in their Beta 1 state the apps are pretty and polished. Again, there is a performance issue using wine. I have an Athlon 610 MHz w/ 256 MB RAM, and just applying a basic pinch, perspective or other effect on a simple object can seem painful. I did submit this in to Corel, tho.

    These professional apps, along with Corel's OS will finally make Linux on the desktop a much easier reality. With Office and PhotoPAINT, my boots to Win98 will be almost nil.

    BTW, did you know COREL stands for COwpland REsearch Labs? I got that at the roadshow also.

  • Ha! (Score:3)

    by rwade ( 131726 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @12:49AM (#1136194)
    What do you mean there isn't a downloadable version?!?! golly, who needs to make money any more, how dare they try to make money of us! I'll show them, I'll use pico!

  • Corel vs StarOffice vs Office (Score:3)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <be@@@eclec...tk> on Thursday April 13, 2000 @01:56AM (#1136195) Homepage Journal
    Okay so looking at both Corel WordPerfect 2000, staroffice, and office I'll rank office as the worst.

    Now here's the tough part ... trying to rank WordPerfect2000 over staroffice. I've used both of them ... and I've used them both for windows and linux. The winner is ... you choose :-).

    Corel for the last couple of years has started to see linux as the other market that they should endorse. Not to mention the neo3 ads are kind of interesting to look at. But Corel does lack a web browser and it doesn't really do that perfect of a job to take care of Word files. I do like the great printer support inside wordperfect and all the fonts that have been with WP since the old groupwise days.

    Though staroffice is free unless you might still want to look at wordperfect because it's more of an application than an actual suite. It looks as if staroffice was meant to be loaded onto a computer and that's all the computer would need to run. Wordperfect on the other hand does not. I really like the slideshows that Corel uses through presentations alot more than powerpoint also.

    Finally. The templates in wordperfect are what keep me coming back. If you're a student and you've had to follow MLA documentation before and hate to keep going back to reformat the page the MLA wizzard/template(Whatever you call it) will make the job the easiest.

    Also the MakeItFit manager has saved me quite a few times. This feature alone is worth it to me ... it manages to take the document you have and change around font size and margins in order to make the document however many pages you speficy without making it look too obvious. This is also good when you've typed too much and want to shrink the document down.

  • My Review (Score:3)

    by arrasmith ( 174401 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @06:01AM (#1136196) Homepage
    I just sent the review to the CorelLinux users list. Might as well post it here.

    I just bought 2 copies WP Office 2000 deluxe for work (and home) along with Office standard (no paradox). Just some notes:

    First warning . . . It looks like this is a "stop gap" measure to give Corel some time to get a true Linux native application. Why do I say this? These are modified Windows binaries that are being run on Corel's version of WINE. So not only do you get WP Office you get a rather nice version of WINE. (look at the script wordperfect and you should see how it can be made to run other windows binaries) Now WINE does give longer startup times, but once the applications are running they are rather quick. I've run this an a Cyrix 166MHz, K6 333MHz, K6 266MHz, and Celeron 400MHz and I am happy with the performance.

    Installation.
    WP Office Deluxe comes with Corel Linux 1.1 and I installed this fresh on a Cyrix 166 and upgraded from Corel Linux 1.0 on a K6 266MHz and a K6 333MHz (this is a laptop). I didn't have any problems with the fresh install and it was the easiest. To upgrade just boot from the Corel Linux cdrom and choose the upgrade option. The upgrade actually fixed my network problems on the K6 266 and but is also killed my laptop. I was able to fix the laptop because the boot cd comes with a rather complete running version of Linux (vi,etc) so that I could mount my hard drive and get my system running again. The main problem seems to be with not having interactive control of dpkg during the upgrade to handle conflicts. In the end I just tar > gzip'ed my home directory and /etc to save settings and then did a fresh install of Corel 1.0 and then upgraded to 1.1 without installing the new kernel.

    Also they fixed the 98% bug. And the partition program is Much Much better. You can now use your entire disk, keep existing partitions, choose to format an existing partition or not, and the overall interface in nicer.

    Actually you don't need Corel Linux 1.1 to install WP Office. I've heard of success stories with RedHat 6.1 and Mandrake. To install Office all you need to do is mount -o exec /mnt/cdrom/ ,run /mnt/cdrom/setup and follow the instructions. I run setup this way because even though the install program is graphical it writes information to the console that you launched it from. So you can see what files are being installed, problems that might occur, and you can make sure that the true type font server (fontastic) is run at the end of the install. Only problem: I had to run the setup twice on my laptop (first time segfaulted), but the other machines took it just fine the first time out.

    Running.
    The first time you run an Office application it checks to see if you have a .wpo2000 directory (which by the way is a WINE system directory). If you don't it pops up a "read this and then click yes" prompt and installs a default .wpo2000. So you have to be patient. Actually you need to be patient when loading any of the applications.
    After install the average start time was 20 secs to splash screen and another 20 secs to a running application on a Cyrix 166. All of the applications look like their Windows counterparts (probably because they ARE the Windows version). Again I recommend starting the programs the first time from a console by typing wordperfect, quattropro, or presentations (or paradox). After the first run you can just use the links in the start menu.

    Problems.
    If you run into a error box that says something like "The application has encountered a fatal error. If the problem persists, contact Corel Technical Support." Just try and run the application via a console and get better information like:

    mand:~$ wordperfect
    wine:'/home/arrasmith/.wpo2000/wineserver-mand/s ocket' exists,but I cannot connect to it; maybe the server has crashed? If this is the case, you should remove the socket file and try again.

    And so all you have to do is

    rm /home/arrasmith/.wpo2000/wineserver-mand/socket

    and have everything working again. Which makes the graphical error box REALLY REALLY STUPID! Couldn't they add the message explaining the real problem to the box? Of course I could just see if the wine error message can be dumped to the kmessage box by looking at the wordperfect launch script (anyone what to give this a try? my bash programming isn't that good).

    WordPerfect.
    Nice. If you have used any word processor you should feel right at home. Weird things: File Open(Save) maps ~/, /, /mnt/floppy, and /mnt/cdrom to "virtual drives". Which is actually really nice for normal users. No equation editor of the WP 8-9 type, just the one from WP 5.1 - 7. Also pick a good default font because some video cards have problems with displaying "_" or "." (I've only seen this problem on one computer).

    I've been able to import several large Word 9 (MS Office 2000) and the formating is mainly intact. Equations are really screwed up though. It looks like the solution to the equation problem is to get the true type font that MS uses for their equations onto the Linux box (anybody know what font that is?). Word 8 and Word 7 conversions retain the formatting more closely to the original.

    QuattroPro
    The number one reason to get this package. A REAL spreadsheet. I haven't found any major show stoppers so far. By the way I have tried StarOffice, Applix, SIAG, Gnumeric, KSpread, and several other spreadsheets for Linux. None of them comes even close to QuattroPro.

    Problems: you have to drag to resize and not use the maximize button. Also it seems to have problems with some very large spreadsheets. The windows version does 1,000+ by 1,000+ cell documents (where each cell is the average of the surrounding cells) and the Linux version just sits there. Updating of cells is also much slower than the windows version.

    Presentations
    Just plain cool. The Show on the Go feature can export your presentation as an executable. Your options are to make one that runs on Linux (2.2.x kernel), Windows 9.x, or Windows 9x/NT/Win3.11. The drawing side is really intuitive and suitable for minor graphics work. You can make an excellent presentation in very little time that is as interactive or automated as you like. Just plain cool.

    Paradox, Corel Central
    I haven't worked with these other than to see if they run, which they do. Corel Central doesn't interface to any email program which is really poor in my book. We need better graphical email applications than kmail or Netscape. Corel, can you bring back the one from Corel Central 8 (or was it 7)? If Corel Central just added a nice email/news reader it would be a killer application.

    Bean filled penguin
    My daughter (2.5 years old) loves him.

    Personal Opinion.
    If you want a working Office suite and have a Pentium 166MHz+ look into Corel. I am very happy with it so far, and I've been able to get several other windows applications to run with the included version of WINE. I just hope the upgraded versions will be native because nearly 40 seconds to load (on slow machines) is a very long time.

    - mark arrasmith

  • Corel had to move much faster then the wine development team, so they made a private tree which they developed wine further..

    Take a look at the wine mailing lists - you should see that Corel offered back the changes...

  • It's a sad day..... (Score:5)

    by AppyPappy ( 64817 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @01:58AM (#1136198)
    When techies get excited about a Word processor. Why, when I was a young programmer, we did all our documents in Pong.

  • I was afraid of this (Score:5)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @01:44AM (#1136199) Homepage Journal
    This is possibly one of the worst things that can happen to Linux: While I use Corel Wordperfect 8 (and find it adequate), when I heard that Corel Office 2000 was basically a Wine app, I became worried that it would be buggy and crash prone. Wine, for all the magic in its ability to run Windows binaries, it still not quite ready for prime time; furthur while I look forward to being able to run unmodified Windows binaries (for those foolish companies that won't make a native version of their app), I want programs that claim to be "Linux versions" to be just that: Linux versions, not Windows versions + an emulator.


    Corel, if you are reading this: Spend the time to make your apps portable, use GTK, and make true native Linux versions. Yes, it will be several man-years of effort, but in the long run it will pay off.

  • As one who OWNS WPO2k (Score:5)

    by sl3xd ( 111641 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @05:23AM (#1136200) Journal
    I really like it - I use Debian, XFree86 4, and a couple of font servers.

    Adding the Fonttastic font server didn't hurt at all - everything still works, the fonts are beautiful and there are no conflicts.

    The suite is very functional, and while having a few bugs, it is definately still acceptable to work with - moreso than Staroffice or Abiword to say the least.

    And, YES, the suite is very KDE-Centric; but what do you expect? Corel is one of the large developers/contributors to KDE. As for the whole KDE-GNOME thing - just grow up. The source is free for both, QT is free source and FSF-certified as 'open source.' The crying about KDE being closed or somehow evil, bad, etc is getting very old and most uninteresting, espescially since the arguments simply aren't true. Of course, there are those who hate C++, but that's their deal.

    I find it interesting that people have no problem with Closed-Source QuakeIII, CivIII, Whatever than Mech-type game is, RR Tycoon... man! Sure are a lot of closed-source programs there that are approved of! So what's wrong with having a commercial Office Suite? It's FAR more functional than the open-source counterparts at this time, and well worth the $ paid for it. (Although with Free software, you don't always get what you pay for... you often get a LOT more).

    I had problems with the install of WPO2k - it was looking for some files that should have been in my path for root. That was my bad, not theirs. But, it has instructions for a manual-install via dpkg, apt, or RPM, so it's nothing I'm unaccustomed to.

    The suite takes FOREVER to load the *first* time - it's building font-metrics for WINE. After that task is done, ALL the office programs load as quickly as their Windoze counterparts on my PII/450. The performance isn't 'snappy' - it's more like using a word-processor 5 years ago using a 486/66. Not bad, just having .1 - .25 seconds delay.

    Honestly, I am quite satisfied with WordPerfect 2000/Linux. I am still looking foreward to the first service pak for some minor bug-fixes; but there are fewer than I've seen for other office suites.

    Being an open-source purist is a luxury that I and millions of other cannot afford. There is nothing 'wrong' with having proprietary software for Linux. Just because it's not GPL'd doesn't mean it's bad. Corel has created a product that is very functional and attractive to use, and - MOST IMPORTANTLY - it will give the press, buisinesses, etc. a good look at where Linux is going- that it is NOT some fringe OS, but is here to stay. The fact that WPO2k is brand-name, commercial software for Linux is going to turn some heads towards Linux. It will win converts to the OS. It will provide a 'gate' through which people will start using Free Software, and see the advantages to it. The release of WPO2k is one of the best things that has happened to Linux in quite a while. It will turn more heads to Linux and provide incentive to move to Linux. And that's what is most important.

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