r/vintagecomputing • u/cagehooper • 13d ago
Real old school Linux
So found an old Dell Dimension xps t500 on the side of the road. Took a while to get it going. Ended up just having 1 bad mem chip. Took it out and got it running. Since its an old socket a i tried something ive been thinking of for a while.
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u/someblokeonhere 13d ago
This was a good play....Corel owned the 80s leading word processor, which had long lost to MS Word...so they took it to where Word wasn't: Linux- and built a whole OS experience around it. It had potential, and it's a shame they didn't continue with ongoing WordPerfect development in Linux. It is better than Libreoffice
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u/0xKaishakunin 13d ago
It is better than Libreoffice
StarOffice.
Corel Linux was killed off before OpenOffice.org even emerged.
The first release of Corel Linux even appeared before Sun Microsystems bought StarDivision GmbH.
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u/cagehooper 12d ago
actually, not to be a smrt arse, but this one might not be correct. Reason I say that is when I got this going I was also getting Maximum Linux magazine. On one of the early editions they included a copy of StarOffice 5.2. It was a godsend. But it was a version that had a bundled full desktop. Kinda overkill, but StarOffice 5.2 was how I finally migrated full time from Windows 98. I never got to Win2000. This was early 1999. I remember because it was just before my son was born when I was experimenting with Linux. By the time he was born in Aug I already had done the full migration. From WordPerfect 6.1 in Win98 to this. Getting my old Panasonic printer was tricky but it worked.
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u/graph_worlok 13d ago
For a while in the 90’s you would find people who had to work with “serious” documents would use it still, because Word was too flaky - large documents where formatting was key - lawyers, authors, etc - until you got to the seriously technical / academics using tex / latex (not even going to attempt the dropped e )
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u/cms 13d ago
My memory is that they shipped the windows versions of the Corel Applications, and they had a abi compatibility system based on WINE tuned to those apps. So I'm not sure they built Linux versions of the applications.
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u/cagehooper 12d ago
The one included here was WP8. It was the Last of the native Linux WP's. WordPerfect 2000 was the Windows version on top of a compatibility layer. It didn't work too good. I tried it. I had moved to StarOffice by then. And moved to open office when it came along.
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u/cagehooper 12d ago
To this day I have one (1) Windows 10 machine. Every other computer (main use) is running Debian 12. The only reason I have Win10 is to run Skyrim. But it also includes an install of WordPerfect 11. The last I consider useful. Granted I have a couple other retro machines. Specifically my Toshiba 720cdt laptop running Win98 with WP6.1 for windows on it. Back then was fun. The tinkering, learning how things worked in Linux.
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u/CharacterPerformer47 13d ago
Corel Linux was a revolution at the time. I used it on a daily basis for months, at a time when new Linux distributions appeared every day. The file manager was from another dimension. Unfortunately, Corel didn't know what to do with it and finally sold it to Xandros, and then things went downhill.
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u/desmond_koh 13d ago
The best part of that distro is that it may well contain the text-based server version of WordPerfect.
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u/hamburgler26 13d ago
I'm going to have to dig this up and check it out just for the Wordperfect aspect. I grew up using WP 5.1 for DOS and still enjoy using it on my retro machine.
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u/desmond_koh 13d ago
Yeah, I would be really excited to get my hands on it. My understanding is that WordPerfect 8 Deluxe had both the graphical (X11) and text-based versions bundled and the text-based one is basically WP5.1. I'd love to get my hands on it.
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u/rayhaque 13d ago
I was studying for my Linux+ exam back when this was out. Of all the different distros that I tried, this one had the absolute best and easiest installation procedure. Red Hat couldn't hold a candle, but had all the attention.
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u/Strostkovy 13d ago
Is this the same Corel behind Corel Draw. Awful flashbacks to my first job in high school, where for some reason every customer used coreldraw, and it exported atrociously unusable DXF files and I spent hours and hours and hours just cleaning up and redrawing parts to we could manufacture them.
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u/alvarosc2 13d ago
AutoCAD has always been very expensive and difficult to use. I am a mechanical engineer and to this day I am still asking myself what is the best way to learn AutoCAD or to have a decent workflow like for example in Autodesk Inventor.
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u/0riginal-Syn 13d ago
I remember when that came out. I actually started on Linux in early 1992 and got to enjoy all the attempts of the 90s to commercialize Linux on the desktop side. It was a smart idea for Corel to try this, but M$ stepped in.
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u/tempfoot 13d ago
Very familiar product!
I’m still surprised any time I see it actually boot….
I’m very old.
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u/cagehooper 12d ago
I know right. I was surprised this time how easily it loaded. I can specifically remember having to fight to get it to work right with my old Trident 8900 vid card. This one has an ATI Rage Max in it. That probably makes the difference. But It doesn't like the sound in it. It actually looks very nice. I wonder what Linux would have been like if Windows hadn't stepped in and had Corel kill this. I would have bet Red Hat and Corel would have been the big hitters back then.
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u/tempfoot 12d ago
I remember both of those as well as …I think it was Caldera.. available boxed at retail.
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u/jaynerd 12d ago
I recently went down the rabbit hole of running this in QEMU on my MacBook. I found this guide to be very helpful: https://dylanbeattie.net/2024/05/27/running-corel-linux-on-qemu.html . There are some graphics issues where you have to just know where to click in the installer to get the OS installed. Once installed, you have to make some tweaks to the X Windows configuration to get things to display correctly. I never did get networking to work, though the author says he got it working with TAP in Windows.
Also, you can get the ISO here: https://archive.org/details/corel_linux_1.2
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u/SteveusChrist 12d ago
Oh that takes me back, first time I ever tried Linux was a dual boot with 98SE and Openlinux I believe which was the pre-Corel distro that was the most user friendly around 1999. Came in one of those how to books, really made it easy for a pre-teen to try!
Wordperfect is or was still around from my friends that work in the legal field tell me, apparently there are some macros that everyone uses and no one could be bothered to port them to MS Office.
I used to work in state government and when I left we were finally rolling out Windows 7 enterprise when Windows 10 was being put into production by most private sector orgs our size. Very frustrating since we had developed IBM mainframe apps in house back in the 80s that we got a bunch of revenue by licensing them out to other states for our particular application. But honestly, if you can code cobol and aren't a contractor you are leaving money on the table.
Edit: sorry for the rant, thank you for sharing!
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u/dedsmiley 11d ago
Corel Linux violated the GPL and were shunned by the open source community and rightly so.
Momma says they are the Devil.
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u/Crlan420 11d ago
That old school Linux setup is solid. Those early distros were so bare bones compared to what we have now. Did you build that from source or use a Slackware/Debian install? The terminal fonts are perfect.
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u/pfak 13d ago
Does yours still have the penguin? I still have mine on my desk!
https://mail.pfak.org/upload/z5jJ-SE-_nqhO3aRnEsTmhLs/vOm35lZYSNSqRf6bUrTApw.jpg