Ottawa, Canada- March 2, 1999- Corel Corporation has announced
today its plan to introduce a user-friendly, easy to install
interface for the Linux® Operating System (OS), at the
LinuxWorld conference in San Jose, California.
At the first major trade show devoted to commercial applications
in Linux OS, Corel president and chief executive officer Dr.
Michael Cowpland announced the expected November release.
“We plan to simplify Linux by creating an easily accessible
desktop environment,” said Dr. Cowpland. “Linux will then be
available to all computer users who wish to experience its
benefits.”
The emphasis of the new Corel version of Linux will be on simple
installation and a graphical user interface (GUI) that sits on top
of the operating system, similar to those used on the Windows®
or Macintosh® OS. Corel is also anticipating Linux versions of
its WordPerfect® Office 2000 this year, and CorelDRAW® and
Corel PHOTO-PAINT® for Linux in 2000.
“The difficult-to-use reputation of Linux will be left behind,”
said Dr. Cowpland. “Everyone will be able to experience the power
and stability of Linux without learning complicated codes.”
Corel’s decision to provide a user-friendly version of Linux is
consistent with its corporate vision that consumers should be able
to use their applications on the operating system of their
choice.
Corel Corporation
Corel Corporation is an internationally recognized developer of
award-winning graphics and business productivity applications.
Development of market-leading products such as the CorelDRAW®
line of graphics applications and the Corel® WordPerfect®
Suite of business tools is continually evolving to meet the demands
of the corporate, retail and academic markets. Committed to value,
compatibility, choice and open standards, Corel develops products
for the Windows®, Macintosh®, UNIX®, Linux® and
Java(TM) platforms. Corel’s common stock trades on The NASDAQ Stock
Market under the symbol COSFF and on the Toronto Stock Exchange
under the symbol COS. For more information visit Corel’s Web site
at www.corel.com.
* Q&A to follow.
Corel, WordPerfect, CorelDRAW, Corel PHOTO-PAINTand the Go
Further logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel
Corporation or Corel Corporation Limited. Linux is a registered
trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other product and company names
are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective
companies.
Corel and Linux
Why is Corel supporting Linux?
At Corel, we believe in value, compatibility and performance and
this is enshrined in our corporate mission statement. We have
always believed consumers should be able to use their favorite
application on the operating system of their choice. Our decision
to support Linux is consistent with our corporate vision and is
similar to our Mac endeavors.
Is Corel supporting the Wine project and
why?
Corel is supporting the Wine project because it is the best
technology at our disposal to speed the process of moving our
office suite applications to Linux. Wine allows us to move Win32
code quickly and easily to Linux. We believe Linux won’t be able to
achieve a critical mass on the desktop until more applications are
available. Contributing our efforts to the Wine project not only
helps us with our applications, but creates the opportunity for
many other application vendors to come on board.
What is Corel’s involvement with the Wine
project?
Corel is actively participating in the development of Wine, both
from a source and binary compatibility standpoint. We are putting
significant resources into this development effort and are sharing
our work with the Wine community on an ongoing basis. Our
involvement with the Wine project is a demonstration of our
commitment to the open source community and its philosophy of
offering platform-agnostic solutions. For more information on Wine,
please refer to www.winehq.com.
Isn’t Corel fragmenting the market by offering Corel
Desktop Linux*?
In order for Linux to become the operating system of choice
among desktop users, we must offer a simple-to-use installation and
GUI. That’s where Corel Desktop Linux will fill the gap. Corel
Desktop Linux will expand the Linux market by helping average
desktop users install the operating system quickly and easily. We
are not fragmenting the market but rather consolidating it by
putting our resources behind the GUI. And by returning source code
back to the community, we are helping to support and strengthen the
open source community.
In addition, regardless of the installation process or GUI used,
WordPerfect Office 2000 and other major Corel applications for
Linux will run on all distributions of the operating system. Again,
we believe users must have a choice, even when it comes to using
our products.
Will Corel Desktop Linux support KDE or Gnome? Or will
Corel develop another GUI?
At this point, we are in the discussion stage only and no
decision has been made. We need to evaluate all available
technologies and determine the most effective way to bring Linux to
the desktop.
What exactly will Corel Desktop Linux
contain?
Our emphasis will be on simple installation and the GUI
environment that sits on top of the operating system. Because we
are in the early exploratory stage, the packaging format is
undefined at this point. Our goal is to provide a Linux solution
for the desktop and we will provide as many of our own and
third-party applications as possible.
When will Corel Desktop Linux be available?
We anticipate the product will be available by November
1999.
Will Corel Desktop Linux be available as a standalone or
bundled with Corel’s applications?
We are still in the process of determining whether Corel Desktop
for Linux will be bundled with our applications only, or if it will
also be available as a standalone product. Our objective is to give
as many desktop users access to Linux as possible and if there is a
demand for a standalone product, we will certainly investigate the
opportunity.
Will Corel Desktop Linux work on other architectures
that the Linux kernel supports, i.e., PPC, SPARC, Alpha, etc. or
will it only run on x86 architecture? If not, does Corel have plans
to support these platforms in the future?
Our priority is the x86 environment but many others, such as the
StrongARM®, will follow.
IBM has recently announced plans to co-market its
upcoming Linux distribution in cooperation with Red Hat. Does Corel
have any plans to follow a similar marketing strategy?
Corel is a commercial enterprise but we fully support the
objectives and goals of the open source community. We demonstrate
that commitment by dedicating resources to open source projects and
returning our work to the open source community. We’re doing this
because we believe in Linux and have the same objective as many
people in the Linux community – to make the OS accessible to as
many people as possible.
Traditionally Linux has been focused on the server market but we
believe the key to its future is moving Linux to the desktop
community. This is a different distribution focus and a different
market. We want to combine Wine with our native applications and
other applications to provide a package suitable for everyone.
Will WordPerfect Office 2000 run under Wine emulation,
or will it use the WINElib option (be natively compiled and linked
with WINElib)?
Our intention is to have a natively compiled version for Linux
but it will also run in binary mode. The exact configurations of
the two have yet to be determined.
Will Corel release the source code for its major
applications?
While Corel recognizes the value of open source development in
many areas, and is actively participating in a number of open
source efforts such as Wine, we have no plans to release the source
code for our major applications. Our major applications contain
many features that rely on code licensed from other vendors, with
whom we have a variety of contractual obligations – one of which is
to keep their source code private. We could not release our
application source code without a tremendous amount of development
work to isolate the licensed code, and this work would have a
significant impact on our release schedule.
When will Corel release further applications for
Linux?
We anticipate releasing WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux by the
end of this year. This will include WordPerfect 9, Quattro® Pro
9 and Corel Presentations(TM) 9. We are targeting release of
CorelDRAW® 9, Corel PHOTO-PAINT® 9 and Corel VENTURA(TM)
for Linux next year.
*Please note this is a code name only and is not official.