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Lotus Notes For Linux To Be Released By IBM 219

Posted by Hemos from the follow-on-corporate dept.
gamigad writes "According to ZDNet, Lotus Notes 7.0.1 will be released for Linux. Availability is expected to be on July 24. It ain't gonna be a free lunch, tho" It's going to be based mainly on the Eclipse framework, and it does appear that you'll be able to swap a Linux version for a Windows or Mac version if you so choose.
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Lotus Notes For Linux To Be Released By IBM More

Lotus Notes For Linux To Be Released By IBM

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  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:12AM (#15690165)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Can't be a bad thing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pegr ( 46683 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:17AM (#15690187) Homepage Journal
      I'm glad to see a native version, but Notes always worked very well under WINE for me. See what can happen when you write only to the published API?
      • Lotus Notes (6.5.x) worked fine under WINE, until you started drag & dropping messages in folders. Then it because completly unstable.
        In the end I had to move to a VMware Workstation solution to keep using Notes under Linux.

        I've been waiting for a native version for years. It's about time :-(
        • I used Crossover Ofice with Notes 6.5 and never experienced the problem you describe.

          I know that Codeweavers add some of their own stuff in, but it was my understanding that all of their code eventually made its way back to WineHQ.

    • Absolutely a bad thing! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ada95 ( 183169 )
      I hate Notes. Its my absolute, all time, most hated application (for any OS). It has the most mega-goofy, non-intutive interface and requires gigabytes of RAM just to start itself.

      Run from this, Linux, run very fast and very far or Notes will never let you run again. Aieeeeee!
      • What do you mean? It isn't like there is a whole section of the User Interface Hall of Shame [mac.com] dedicated entirely to Lotus Notes [mac.com]...

        Oh... wait. I've used Notes from 4.5 through the current version... just remember - Notes is a database interaction UI that happens to allow e-mail as a side-effect.

      • SAP (Score:2)

        by booch ( 4157 )
        I hate Notes. Its my absolute, all time, most hated application (for any OS). It has the most mega-goofy, non-intutive interface and requires gigabytes of RAM just to start itself.

        You've obviously never had to use SAP.
        • I'd have to agree with relation between the two. But then again, SAP was written by Germans. I also wish they would come out with a non-java based Linux client.

    • Actually, it's a good thing, (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jaqui ( 905797 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:21AM (#15690212) Homepage Journal
      since a lot of Companies have refused to switch to Linux because of the perceived lack of software in this type of area.

      I know of several IT Department heads for Fortune 500 Companies that have asked for software that matches MS Echange / Lotus Notes for Linux before they would concider switching to Linux desktops.

      This is also the first step in IBM actually putting their product line behind their public stand of supporting open source operating systems, not just their money into open source projects.

      The biggest drawback is the eclipse framework. Eclipse's java requires sun's jvm which conflicts with gjc. Open Office requires gjc in linux for 100% functionality, sun's jvm won't cut it.

      • The biggest drawback is the eclipse framework. Eclipse's java requires sun's jvm which conflicts with gjc. Open Office requires gjc in linux for 100% functionality, sun's jvm won't cut it.
        gcj has been building Eclipse for awhile now... you might try using that instead of polluting the system with Sun's JVM where it is no longer needed.
        • I went into #java and got yelled at for having this "gcj" installed. They said it was total crap and nothing would work right with it.

          At this point, fuck Java. Sick of dealing with the bullshit.

          • Re:Actually, it's a good thing, (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            GCJ is not Java and the people in the channel did exactly what they should have. You're trying to run Java applications with something that is not Java... GCJ doesn't even have full 1.4 compliance and Java 6 is about to be released. You can't blame Java simply because you insist on using an open source hack that is incredibly bug ridden and isn't even compliant with the last two (soon to be three) versions of Java. Installing Sun Java is incredibly simple and the only reason some people refuse to do tha
          • I went into #linux, and got yelled at for having this "Windows" installed. They said it was total crap and nothing would work right with it.

            At this point, fuck Linux. Sick of dealing with the bullshit.

      • Different jvms do not have to conflict (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You do realise you can have multiple jres installed? Just don't install them as the system default java. I would actually guess that Notes will come with its own copy of the jre which will not affect anything else at all.

      • Re:Actually, it's a good thing, (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mechanik ( 104328 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:57AM (#15690383) Homepage
        Eclipse's java requires sun's jvm which conflicts with gjc. Open Office requires gjc in linux for 100% functionality, sun's jvm won't cut it.

        You don't have to use Sun's JVM. According to the Eclipse 3.2 Project Plan [eclipse.org], there are all kinds of other supported JVMs, e.g. IBM's, HP's, etc. Other VMs might work, they are just not officially supported and tested.

        I know for a fact as well that the Red Hat folks have been successfully compiling Eclipse with GCJ also.

        I'm not really sure why you claim that the JVM conflicts either. You can drop a JRE into eclipse/jre and that's what the launcher will use to the exclusion of anything else.


        Mechanik
      • Other eclipse plugins which my work exploits requires that JDK and it's quite easy to set up. Eclipse even has facilities to configure multiple JDKs and to easily switch between them.
      • The biggest drawback is the eclipse framework.

        No, the biggest drawback is that it's just the mail and database client. No Domino Designer, no Domino Administrator. So all your developers and database and server admins still need to run Windows.

      • The biggest drawback is the eclipse framework. Eclipse's java requires sun's jvm which conflicts with gjc

        Not true in at least two ways:

        First, eclipse runs well with gcj. In fact, on Debian gcj is the default Java environment for eclipse. If you "apt-get install eclipse", it'll run on gcj unless you change it (by setting a JAVA_HOME environment variable, or by editing /etc/eclipse/java_home, or by removing gcj).

        Second, it's quite easy to have multiple JVMs on your system. My laptop has a couple of

    • Since version 6.5 (now it's at 7.0.1) Novell Gropwise runs natively on Linux clients and servers and IMHO is more refined than Lotus as groupware suite. Of course Lotus Notes is much more than a groupware suite, but I wonder how many companies use it as application framework or document database.

    • Is bad thing (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Baloo Ursidae ( 29355 )
      On the other hand, Lotus Notes has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for being a buggy piece of shit. Does any platform really deserve having Notes inflicted upon it?

  • Screenshots (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:13AM (#15690169)
    http://edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/hannovers creenshots.html [edbrill.com]
    • My god, it's actually not totally and utterly hideous. Does it retain the super-advanced (added in 7.x) feature of being able to sort by subject?

      Too late for the company I work for tho (a Fortune 50 company) which has dumped Notes for Exchange. I'm no fan of Outlook, but I can't say I really miss Notes at all.

  • Not free? (Score:3, Informative)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:17AM (#15690186) Homepage Journal

    From the summary:

    It ain't gonna be a free lunch, tho

    I don't this will be a blocking issue for the people who choose to deploy notes. I am very glad I don't have to use it any more.

  • Too little, too late (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:18AM (#15690191) Journal

    This comes severely late, in my opinion. The Wine [winehq.com] and the CodeWeavers [codeweavers.com] people have put work into running Notes on Linux.

    IMHO, it would've been better if IBM had put this investment into Wine so other applications had profited as well. A proper native compilation along with some polishing for the various desktops could've made this "achievement" years earlier. Think Google's Picasa [google.com], which was nicely ported to Linux this way, and runs like a charm.

    • IMHO, it would've been better if IBM had put this investment into Wine so other applications had profited as well.

      Better for us, yes, but for IBM? They're doing this to *sell* Notes, not out of the goodness of their hearts.

    • Re:Too little, too late (Score:3, Informative)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      WINE is a handy tool, but apps that run under it suck. They suck because use Windows conventions for file names, registry settings, paths, menu structure and look and feel. Even if you recompiled the app using winelib they would still suck. After a lot of effort you might be able to hack some of the Windows-ness out of it, but it would be a nightmare to maintain.

      • After a lot of effort you might be able to hack some of the Windows-ness out of it, but it would be a nightmare to maintain.

        Well, obviously they have already dealt with multi-platformness. You think that's a maintenance nightmare as well? Of course not. They probably did their best to isolate the platform-specific stuff and put the rest in separate libs.

        • Well, obviously they have already dealt with multi-platformness. You think that's a maintenance nightmare as well? Of course not. They probably did their best to isolate the platform-specific stuff and put the rest in separate libs.

          Maintaining separate code bases for multiple platforms is a nightmare. I expect IBM have come to that realisation too for Lotus Notes and weighed up their options for consolidating the code base. I expect they looked at cross-platform widget sets like QT or wxWidgets, AJAX, .N

          • Yes, they used Java. However, your argument was that "[wine] sucks because use Windows conventions for file names, registry settings, paths, menu structure and look and feel". Java in this respect is no different at all. You'll still have to do work on the stuff you mention, except look-and-feel in case of SWT.

            Basically you say: wine sucks because of reasons A/B/C/D. Java is better because of reasons A/B/C.

            • Actually I say WINE sucks because apps running on Linux look horrible. They look exactly like they are - Win32 apps running an imperfect version of Windows Classic theme running on Linux. If you don't believe me then you've never used WINE. Items such as the registry are inescapable because so many Win32 components directly or indirectly rely upon settings held there. I expect the old Lotus Notes stuffed all kinds of ActiveX settings and file associations in there. I wouldn't be surprised if Lotus Notes eve

    • Re:Too little, too late (Score:2, Informative)

      by chaves ( 824310 )
      The support to running on Linux was obtained by migrating the client to Java, not by providing some mechanism for running the Windows version on Linux. The benefits of doing it are:

      - it is not a (incomplete) hack like Wine
      - shouldn't be too hard to have the client running on MacOSX, and all Unixes supported by the Eclipse platform (dependending on how much native code they have - I would suspect it not to be that much, as it goes against the decision of using Java + Eclipse).

      • - it is not a (incomplete) hack like Wine

        Wine itself isn't an complete or incomplete hack. It's just a library which can be compiled against. IBM has the source so if Wine had to implement hacks in order to support certain calls, IBM could've used workarounds.

        - shouldn't be too hard to have the client running on MacOSX, and all Unixes supported by the Eclipse platform (dependending on how much native code they have - I would suspect it not to be that much, as it goes against the decision of using Java

  • No! Nooo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by brettlbecker ( 596407 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:21AM (#15690211) Homepage
    Let me just be the first to say...

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

    Okay, now I feel better.

    B

    • Re:No! Nooo! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      Given the spaghetti already under the hood of the Notes client (saving ("detaching") a single attachment and saving multiple attachments seem to go through different APIs, and open dialog boxes in two different toolkits), I wonder whether "based on the Eclipse open-source framework" will be an improvement or just an even worse nightmare.
      • What asshat moderated this as a troll? It's spot on. Actually I can count at least three different widget sets in Notes. Probably four if I looked hard enough.

    • Re:No! Nooo! (Score:4, Informative)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) * on Monday July 10, 2006 @01:12PM (#15692193) Homepage Journal

      AMEN, BROTHER!!!

      There are not words in the English language to describe how much I am in utter comtempt for Lotus Notes. I once composed a three-page list of ways in which Lotus Notes sucks. Most of it was a list of client bugs and inconsistencies, because I didn't have much experience with the server itslef.

      Later, I tried developing a simple agent that would compose an e-mail, taking information from fields stored elsewhere, and sending it out to a list of people. I never could get the damned thing to work. (Too long to explain here.) To this day, I'll write code in javascript, php, VB, C#, perl, whatever. But I refuse to touch Lotus Notes. Period. Even the most trivial of tasks are insanely complicated. (Okay, to be fair, I won't write Gimp scripts in Scheme, either.)

      I'm sorry, and I am not a Microsoft lackey, but I'd take Exchange/Outlook over Notes any day. I'd rather use GMail as a corporate communications solution than Lotus Notes. Hell, I'd rather use yellow sticky notes on monitors than Lotus Notes!

      As for the server, our entire Notes infrastructure has to be rebooted once a week at my company. (A very large MNC...) Once a frickin' week! No other application has that requirement. If SAP told us, "Yeah, and you'll have to reboot the SAP servers every Sunday night," we'd have their heads on a plate. But for some weird reason, Notes (which is just as critical to our business) gets away with it. Half the servers usually don't come back up without intervention, and our wonderful Notes server crew doesn't actually bother to check, so our operations center has to call them. Plus, we're constantly having to deal with mail servers crashing in the middle of the day, and the only explanations we get are, "It's a Notes thing. It just glitches like that sometimes." As you can tell, I have no particular fondness for our Notes support team, but they're not unique. I've worked at two other companies that use Lotus Notes, and the exact same thing happens at every one of them.

      And to the "It's not really an e-mail system, it's a collaborative database application development environment..." people out there, go to hell. No, it's not. There's no such thing as a "flat database." It's called a frickin' table, and it's useless. If it were relational, maaaybe. But then if it were relational, I still wouldn't be using it, I'd be using Oracle, or MySQL, PostgreSQL, even MS SQL Server. You know, something competent.

      So it's an awful e-mail system, it's an awful development environment, it's an awful database system. Let's see, that leaves... oh right. NOTHING. Lotus Notes has absolutely no useful value whatsoever. Q.E.D. Companies that use it (speaking from experience) are using it not because it's the best solution to their needs, but because they've invested a lot of money in it. (Which, by the way is STUPID. They're ignoring the cost going forward, which is the only relevant factor that should be considered!) If IBM really had their customers' best interest in mind, they would simply send out letters to everyone saying, "We're sorry, but in six months, we're going to stop supporting all version of Lotus Notes and never release another." Maybe even open-source the code so that maybe competent people can maybe turn it into something semi-useful.

      • Re:No! Nooo! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Woudl be interesting to knwo whay you did not get your agent to work.
        LotusScript is almost identical to VB, so with yoru VB experience, it should not been that hard.
        I been writing that kind of agents, never had any problems.
        Just remember that if you send the mail to multiple people, you need to store the values into the SendTo field as an array of names, to create a multi-value field. But that is basic common sense, I am sure you did that.
        Nothing else in your description sounds like it would cause any probl

      • Re:No! Nooo! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by pstorry ( 47673 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @05:24PM (#15693936) Homepage
        I don't have time to deal with all your problems, but I'd like to make a point about reliability...

        Restarting your Domino servers once a week is not right. Domino doesn't require that. That needs to be looked at.

        So - do you actually know why they require restarts?

        It might not be Domino.

        Seriously.

        I manage a number of Domino servers in my job. Some of them have to be restarted at least once a month, often because they've begun to degrade massively in their performance - or worse, they've crashed.
        The other servers are fine, and will run for months before they get restarted - and they're restarted because of OS patches or other maintenance, not because of problems on the Domino server.

        Why is this? Well, one word - McAfee's Groupshield. The servers which run it require careful care and occasional kicking. The servers that don't need Groupshield on them don't have it, because it's a PITA which causes us grief.

        We'd like to move away from Groupshield, but it requires lots of evaluation/testing/piloting, and we have other projects to be getting on with.

        And don't think I'm singling out Groupshield. I've seen some abysmal backup programs, content security programs, and other third party add-ins in my time. Don't even think about mentioning ArcServe, for instance. Basically, lots of 3rd party software talks to Notes/Domino via the C/C++/COM/Java APIs it exposes - and not all of them are particularly well written.

        Your experience with the Domino servers is not typical of others. There may be a specific cause for that - if not technical, then management or procedural. But I do find it very difficult to give your grievances ANY credit when you espouse rubbish like this that can so easily be explained, yet is related with so few details that it is difficult for anyone to easily check the facts.

  • EEEeeeew! (Score:3, Funny)

    by drewzhrodague ( 606182 ) <drew@nOsPaM.zhrodague.net> on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:22AM (#15690216) Homepage Journal
    While I've been forced to use Notes on Windows in some of my gigs, I'd prefer to still use PINE, thank you very much. This isn't a piece of software I would *choose* to use, but something I might use rather than having a an additional machine just to run Windows and Notes. Note: I am a unix systems administrator.

    Notes is well known for its 'unique' interface. too much repetition? Why does this post have too much repetition?

    • Re:EEEeeeew! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Forgive me in advance if I'm wrong but isn't pine just an email client? If you actually used Notes properly, you'd know that the mail part of it is just a small mini-app sitting on top of the (massive) groupware application.

    • Blleee-e-e-at! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Unski ( 821437 )
      While I've been forced to use PINE in some of my gigs, I'd prefer to still stick an RJ-45 plug on my tongue and manually read the data stream, thank you very much. PINE isn't a piece of software I would *choose* to use, but something I might use rather than having to constantly fill my mouth with cable. Note: I am a unix systems administrator.

  • IBM internal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by seasunset ( 469481 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:29AM (#15690245) Homepage
    I am speculating here, but I think this might have big consequences inside ... IBM.

    AFAIK, Notes was the single big piece missing to allow desktop transition to Linux inside IBM. I would bet that the more geeky IBM employees that were stuck on Windows because of Notes will change.

    And maybe in the future the company will encorage this.

    If you consider the sheer size of IBM its no small deal for Linux deskop usage...

    Just speculating though... Is there any IBMer wanting to comment?

    • Re:IBM internal (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LinuxHam ( 52232 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:47AM (#15690318) Homepage Journal
      IBM, like most large organizations, has a standard desktop image running Windows. Actually, about 30 of them if you count the site-specific customizations. This has been called c4eb, or Client for eBusiness for several years. I first saw the Linux version in late 2001. Now, in what seems like a fork, a new standard Linux desktop, OpenClient 1.0 or something like that, has gone GA. I've run several iterations under VMware workstation to track its progress and functionality. I've used this Eclipse-based version of Notes. It is bears no resemblance to the full client you are used to. Problem is, my guest still swaps even after I give it 512MB, particularly after I loaded Notes. It is huge. But as the new Linux desktop continues to mature, I'm sure I can expect to come across more than one or two people a year running it as their primary desktop, as has been the case so far.

      Hope this helps.
    • IBM sold my project four years ago. The year before and the year after, while we were still on IBM's infrastructure, I played around with their C4eb. I was cleaning up abused machines as well as sanitizing former coworker's computers. They of course got Windows 2K. I put the Linux option on one of my machines. It came prepackaged with WINE and NotesUnderLinux. I found a java client for SAP and was nearly fully functional. I found statistics on internal OS usage and noticed the other flavors of Linux being u

    • Is there any IBMer wanting to comment?

      Sure. I'm happy to hear about this, but I probably won't use it. I quit using Notes about a year ago in favor of a small tool called "fetchnotes" that pulls my e-mail from my Notes server and drops it into my local mail spool, which I then read with whatever e-mail client strikes my fancy. I'm presently using Kontact, and it works very nicely. Calendaring works, except that my calendar isn't published on my Notes server so others can't look at it, but I can recei

  • Like Notes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by marcushe ( 895126 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:30AM (#15690248)
    I was a Lotus Notes administrator for Duke University - and even though I can see how at first glance the end user and IT admin would hate it - I don't I really like it actually. Great account management and features. It's all proprietary, but I think Notes is a great technology, and now runs on more platforms than Exchange.
    • Yeah -- Notes is increadibly System Admin friendly, so long as you have a large enough site to make it worthwhile.

      Notes is a good example of "IBM listens to its customers", except it's customers are all IT Admins and Developers. That's why the UI philosophy is "Just make it good enough to get these users clammering for Outlook off my back."

  • Late, but still interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Christopher B. Brown ( 1267 ) <cbbrowne@gmail.com> on Monday July 10, 2006 @08:36AM (#15690275) Homepage
    As much as it nicely rhymes with "Bloated Goats," for mobile users, the ability to stow your documents in an encrypted, replicated data store is worth rather a lot.

    It represents a decent answer to the "oops, someone stole my laptop at the airport" problem in that it offers both a quick recovery process and some protection that the stealers should not get at your data.

    I'll be very curious as to what happens with respect to document management, whether they'll be supporting OpenOffice.org, or if there's either some other strategy (SmartSuite for Linux???), or a lack of strategy...

  • Great News (Score:2, Insightful)

    by berenixium ( 920883 )
    This is good news. The Microsoft front-line is getting a battering from all sides at the moment, while the Nix parties are getting stronger with more support by the day. And Lotus Notes can only reinforce that position against the Vole.

  • it is free to move to Linux from Windows/Mac (Score:4, Informative)

    by dominux ( 731134 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:00AM (#15690401) Homepage
    The Notes client isn't free or Free (although many applications that run on it are - see openntf.org) however if you have a client license for Windows or Mac then you can use it on Linux at no additional cost. In fact the licensing is per person, if you have a Windows machine, a Mac and a Linux box or three then you can use your Notes ID on all of them at once if you like. If you are using Notes already, then moving the desktop operating system to Linux is most certainly a free lunch.

  • People are missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mechanik ( 104328 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:05AM (#15690424) Homepage
    I'm more excited about moving Notes to the Eclipse framework rather than the aspect of Linux support. Not that Linux support isn't important, but moving to Eclipse is going to mean that the general usability of Notes is going to get better for everyone regardless of the platform that they're on.

    Hell, as someone that has to use Notes, I'm salivating just at the prospect of the better view/window management that Eclipse provides. Eclipse is an extremely flexible and customizeable framework, and the lack of such customizeablity has been hurting the usability of Notes for a long time. "What do you mean the preview pane is fixed to be at the bottom of the screen? You mean I can't dock it at the right? ARRRRRGH!". Etc.

    If the people on Notes start following the Eclipse Way (TM), things will only get better from here.

    Mechanik

  • Ed Brill, the guy quoted in the story is a blogger (Score:3, Informative)

    by dominux ( 731134 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:08AM (#15690446) Homepage
    Quite a prolific blogger, and very good at it too, his blog is at http://www.edbrill.com/ [edbrill.com] and he talks about this announcement here http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/notes -on-linux-announcement?opendocument&comments [edbrill.com]

  • This is fantastic! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JohnnyOpcode ( 929170 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:16AM (#15690497)
    Say what you will about Notes/Domino, but it is a very powerful platform than most realize. I look forward to the MS-Exchange vs. Notes/Domino wars. Thus Linux (and OS X) become more available platforms in many corporate settings which is good for everyone. And please remember, when you 'dis' Notes/Domino, you 'dis' some highly-intelligent programmers at Lotus/IBM who probably make you look like a script kiddie! I can't wait to see the evolution when Notes/Domino 8.0 arrives on the scene..I think MS is going to feel more heat from the competition.

  • Resume (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kinthelt ( 96845 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:17AM (#15690498) Homepage
    There's a reason I leave my experience with Lotus Notes off of my Resume.

  • Lotus Notes on Linux is unstable (Score:4, Informative)

    by Servo ( 9177 ) <dstringf@noSPam.tutanota.com> on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:38AM (#15690620) Journal
    I work at a place that is in the process of migrating from a Windows platform to a Linux platform for their Lotus Notes 6.5.5 environment. The problem with Notes on Windows is that Windows is unstable. The problem with Notes on Linux is Notes becomes unstable. There are also all sorts of Gotcha's... like the way backups work. Administrative rights are funky too.
    • Wise man say: "The Notes on Linux that is 6.5.5 is not the true Notes on Linux"
    • Administrative rights are funky too.

      Well, Notes has for years been a product in need of a first class HCI makeover, but has got instead marketing driving makeovers that make things more confusing than they need to be.

      However, at some point you have to trade off features for simplicity. And a lot of Notes administrative complexity comes from the ability to delegate administration in a secure fashion. You can get any two: simplicity, scalability, security. Notes can be configured to be scalable and secu

  • But the Mac client sucked.. not sure about 7.x tho (Score:4, Informative)

    by nighty5 ( 615965 ) on Monday July 10, 2006 @09:38AM (#15690622)
    The mac client was resource hungry and sluggish.

    Lets hope Notes 7 is an improvement over 6.x for any other platform than Windows...

    Our company moved away from Domino and onto Exchange 12 months ago and it has allowed Mac enthusiasts to run Entourage 2004 which totally rocks under the Mac. The new service pack delivers native Exchange/AD/GAL in Entourage which was a welcome change.

  • ..and have been on design review teams and other sorts of preview programs for the "Hannover" release which is the thing that generated the work itself. This isn't Hannover (which is Notes/Domino v8) but it stems from that work.

    What most people don't know is that Notes was always built to be ported. It is MOSTLY portable code. Only the user interface calls themselves -- which have always been kept apart from the rest of the code -- is platform specific. This concept of a "Separation Layer" has been in the server and client since the earliest days of the product back in the early 90's. The UI port to run within the Eclipse framework (which IBM has been a huge part of) was much easier than anyone expected.

    The best news -- for those who run the product anyway -- is that this isn't a "Port" or a "reworking" of the code. This is the same secure, stable, code. It's not just "compatible" its the actual code so there won't be problems of compatibility between versions running on different operating systems. The only potential issue will be that locally stored applications will be case sensitive on Linux but not on other platforms. Sloppy programming practices then will be highlighted if users run local applications that haven't been tested on a case sensitive operating system. This has long been true on the server side.

    You may or may not like the product -- that has no value in this discussion. About 120 million people use it every day, and for those people one major barrier to moving toward a linux workstation has been lifted.

    • The points made in this post are quite valid. Lotus Notes is more stable than most appreciate. And like most things, the good 'ole 80/20 rule applies here in terms of who is using the majority of the features.

      I'll also say this; the collective clamoring for a 'native' Notes client for Linux has finally risen to a loud enough point that this product release is imminent. I've been using Notes running on wine for about 2 years now, and this will blow that setup out of the water.

      Also, I found an IBM PDF [ibm.com]

    • > This is the same secure, stable, code.

      Are you on fucking CRACK? Have you EVER actually run the product? It's the buggiest, most bloated, badly designed piece of shit I've ever had the misfortune to see.
      • You got to give him secure.

        But stable? Come on. Lotus has, on their website, a program called "Kill Notes" (or something similar) because when Lotus Notes crashes (and it does, about every couple of hours) it leaves behind ghost processes and won't restart itself until those processes are killed. The code is bloated beyond belief, the user interface is a crime against users.
  • While I can see this as one more reason not to be tied to Windows, TBH I'd rather tell my boss that no, Notes simply won't work on Linux, so in the process of migrating we will simply have to use something ... ANYTHING ... else. ;)
  • "One less reason to use Windows for those who need/want Lotus."

    You expect organizations that STILL have not gotten rid of Notes to ditch Windows????
  • ...I think this is more than six years late.

    By now, the web has matured to such an extent that there really aren't many reasons anymore to keep using fat (Notes) clients, and currently I see more projects migrating away from Notes than towards it.

    Also, over six years ago a Linux version was mentioned, and when it came out it was only the Domino server. And this time? Will IBM release both user-client and development-client, or will developers be left in the cold again?

    That said, some of the aspects of Notes
  • What about a GPL Notes client, so people wanting to deliver "Web" services from Notes servers can use or research the client code necessary to connect?
    • but if it is "web services" you want which is the XML passing thing with WSDL and so on then Notes does support that natively, you can add web services design elements to applications for consumers to consume. If you want to know more about NRPC which is the native Notes protocol over port 1352 then that is pretty well documented already. It is a decent enough protocol, but perhaps a bit dated now. The fashion these days is for bloated XML based protocols which then get compressed for transit rather than ti
      • I'm more interested in SW components that I can embed in my own apps to access Notes services like calendars, directories and email, in existing Notes servers. Not because Notes is good (whether it is or not), but because so much valuable info is locked up in Notes servers. I'd love to populate a Postgres DB datamart with "live" (low latency) calendar info from across an enterprise so my various apps don't have to each connect to Notes.
  • had to play at least some small part in this: the CTO and to-be Software Achitect at MSFT created Notes [slashdot.org], and now IBM will help enable the (very sizable) install base [wikipedia.org] to have one less reason NOT to migrate desktops of most "knowledge workers" away from MSFT tech.

    S http://meanbusiness.com/ [meanbusiness.com]

  • The notes server isn't bad - its fast, easy to configure and administer and runs on everything (I've even seen it running on mainframes). IBM should license the users at the server (which they do), and provide linux/windows libraries to connect to the server. The Notes Client is obselete by 10 years at least, clunky non-standard graphical interface, slow, heavy resource use, prone to crashes etc.

    Its time for IBM to let Evolution and the other great mail clients out there to talk to Notes - Release t

  • IBM is moving albeit slowly (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nbahi15 ( 163501 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2006 @12:58AM (#15695992) Homepage

    IBM makes some cool stuff. We have a "lifeboat" CD that actually installs a redhat derivative over the network, and configures all the applications (notes included) and vpn. It is fairly slick, although it is really geared towards the average employee. At work (IBM) I run Ubuntu, some people run Fedora, and others Gentoo. Some of the highlights of IBM technology include one of the coolest printer config systems ever. It is amazing how easily you configure the printer via Firefox. I guess if I had a single complaint about the company it is our love of RPMs, but with alien all can be made right. The pre-release Notes client for linux is slow but they are working on it, in the meantime running it within Crossover Office is fine by me. I have never been told what to run at the office, I suppose if your manager didn't want you messing with Linux they could forbid it, but really don't mess with you unless you are infected with a virus, or running a switch or hub in your cube without manager approval. I have worked a few places and IBM is by far the most Linux friendly, excited about moving forward place I have been. I can't think of a day someone didn't talk about Linux, or how much they hate ATIs crap support for Linux.

    As for Notes being a necessary evil,,, well I feel this is an issue that comes down to groupware vs email. If you are in the give me Pine or give me death camp, Lotus Notes is going to drive you mad. If you are in the Gmail camp Lotus Notes is likely to be your enemy. If you are an employee that lives and dies by a calendar, and meetings, then Notes is a friend. The UI arguments are more of a it could better, but most people will live with it and never know the difference.

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