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IBM

Lotus Domino to ship RSN 80

Posted by Hemos from the yet-another-application dept.
2sheds wrote to us with an update from Lotus saying that Domino Server Release 5 will be out for Linux within 30 days.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Lotus Domino to ship RSN More

Lotus Domino to ship RSN

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  • They really should have made it generalized enough that it can run on all major distributions.
    Perhaps. But testing takes time & money. It will probably run fine on the other distributions, but IBM didn't want to spend the resorces to test it on any others.
    There are going to be sysadmins out there who want Domino Server, but run Slackware or Debian.
    I think that if someone is really interested in running Domino, they won't let a minor issue like distribution flavor stop them.

    99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
    fix one bug, compile it again...
  • I don't think I'll ever convert to the "browser as a desktop" world, until it becomes much easier to be a keyboard junkie in a browser. More specifically, until people start designing keyboard functionality into their web apps..

    Ahhh, I can't wait.. :-)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • According to IBM Linux Strategy announcement, all major IBM products (Domino included) should be available (i.e. certified) for 4 linux distribution: RedHat, Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux.

    I'm expecting Domino to make no exception, since the new distros will be very similar libs-wise and Domino depends on very few things (c compiler libs and TCPIP stack, essentially) that are distro-specific.

    Bye,
    Rob!
  • I know that IBM want to charge for Domino. But What I'd like to see is a free version (with something like 10-20 possible accounts limit) for the home user.

    That would spread the use of Domino and increase the number of people who have knowledge on how the software work.

    I would happily install Domino on my home server so I can easily create e-mail accounts for my familly members. I will also have the possibilty to use it as my webserver. It will be much more easier to use and administer that Apache/Sendmail.

  • Be gentle on this looser!! Remember, as long as he is at the keyboard, is can't be out contaminating the gene pool anymore than it is.
  • I've heard from two trusted sources that there _will_ be a Linux client...one is my boss, who just attended a Notes R5 Migration conference in Boston a week or so ago...he said that one of the speakers had mentioned that a Linux client will be released at the 5.03 revision mark (Notes is currently at 5.01). My other source worked at Iris over the summer (The people who make Notes for Lotus), and he said that they were working on a client as well...but I wasn't supposed to tell anyone that :)
  • There is an internet Client for Notes available, except that it sucks more than the Windows Client. At least it doesn't take up 50MB+ of hard drive space on your machine.

  • The documentation indicates what you need to do to get Domino running on other distributions. I believe that RedHat 6 and OpenLinux are the only ones that work 'out of the box', and therefore are the only systems that can be 'certified'
    --
  • Note that with Notes 4.x, they supported clients on Solaris (Sparc and x86), AIX, and HP/UX. The upshot was that not many people were all that interested in running the Notes client on UNIX operating systems. It wasn't worth losing money for the infintesimal number of desktop unix users that would need Notes (rather than standard IMAP & NNTP stuff).

    Now, I know that Linux has lead to a resurgancy in desktop Unix, but unfortuantly the development cycle moves in years, not months. I'm sure that if Lotus could have forseen a demand for Linux on the desktop, they might have planned an R5 client from the get go, but instead the chose to use MFC and target Mac and Windows only. It probably would be impossible for the IBM buearacracy to change course that quickly.

    (If there were a NotesR5/UNIX client, it would be same thing on both Linux and commercial UNIX -- that means Motif. Sorry KDE and Gnome fans.)

    Lotus/IBM looks at the market as a series of deployments of tens and hundreds of thousands of clients. In short, they aren't that worried about the single IT guy who wants to format Windows off his machine. If you are a big shop, and you plan to deploy a few thousand Linux seats, then maybe IBM will listen to you. Otherwise any demand for a Linux client is going right to /dev/null.
    --

  • Those "vulnerabilities" were all due to basic design errors -- in short, bad developers assumed that hiding a document would make it inaccessible. The documentation is clear that this it doesn't work that way, and implementing document level security is quite easy.
    --
  • Or you could just download the software from http://notes.net.
    --
  • Thanks.

    Yep, I've personally run into that SMTP relay bit. I don't know all that much about Notes/Domino internals, though, but I did advise my client to move to a more capable MTA. Haven't taken my advice, last time I checked. :-(
  • Still not quite right. They killed the OS/2 client as well. So it looks like the Mac and Windows clients are the only ones left.
  • support in Notes 4.x was done with a proprietary Win16 emulation layer (similar to WINELIB). I assume that when WINELIB matures it will be a simple matter to link Notes 5.x against WINELIB and build a Linux version.

    Will Lotus do this? Only if there is sufficient demand from Linux users!
  • Exactly why I believe that if people insist on offering only binary distributions, to offer a statically linked copy as well as shared.

    This takes care of almost every problem with distribution differences, other than directory trees.
  • Late reply, but I just confirmed that Notes 5 installs MFC.DLL.
    --
  • Any plans for the Domino client?
  • Yippee.At last I can tinker with Domino on my Linux box, Or can I?

    The server maybe out running on Linux but does anybody know if Domino Designer and Domino Administrator are available?

    If not, I'll still have to keep Windows up and running, sigh :0(

    A great offering, lets just hope it isn't a token one.

  • so much for free software.

    --cornmuffin
  • The issue with supporting Domino R5 on different Linux distributions comes largely from two points:

    1. Different distributions use different libc/glibc versions. Domino was written to use the latest production glibc, thus the support of Red Hat 6.0 and OpenLinux.

    2. The QA effort to validate a Domino installation across all the major Linux distributions is immense. Even with automated test suites, the amount of person-hours spent on thoroughly testing a Domino release on one platform (and different OS releases/distributions are considered separate platforms) becomes a prohibitive obstacle to testing all of them.

    Domino itself does or uses nothing that is distribution-specific. It installs itself completely under /opt/lotus, as do the other Unix variants. However, with the diverse universe of Linux distributions that exist today, it would be impractical for Lotus to assume responsibility for software/platform combinations that they have not tested.

    Now, if you want to complain about the fact that they aren't porting the clients, I'll complain right along with you. :-)
  • Okay, so when Joe Schmoe calls and says "Why can't I get Domino to run on my Linux PC?" what are they supposed to say?

    There could be a thousand things wrong with the distribution that this customer is using. Maybe it's Libc5, maybe it doesn't use the same directory tree structure, maybe it doesn't support mice -- who knows!

    The point is, by supporting Caldera and Redhat, IBM is making sure that certain features are there. I'll bet that Domino will work with just about every other modern distro, but there's probably a bunch that it doesn't, for good reasons too. You can't expect IBM to cater to everyone; it doesn't make sense.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • They have absolutely no plans to port the client at this time. Which is unfortunate, but they may come around with plenty of bugging by people that buy the server. I understand there is quite a bit of talk on their forums by developers running the beta server, but thus far that hasn't been enough to convince Lotus to make the port. So, keep bugging them, but only if you actually will buy the client.
  • What do you mean? Were you expecting this to be released as free software?

    That doesn't make a world of sense. I can see a client being released for free, but not the server. How would they make money off of that? Support?

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • They have to be able to have a service offering.

    If you're running a server in order to run Domino, you're likely going to be installing a fresh server.

    It is not overly onerous to install one of the named distributions in order to run it; what is overly onerous is the bureaucracy that would be involved in validating that Domino works in all sorts of possibly oddball configurations.

    You know, and I know, that if the configuration is generic enough that Domino will run happily on RHAT and Caldera's distributions, it is highly likely that it will also run on other distributions.

    Let IBM have their bureaucratic nightmares, and be happy with them.

    Those customers that want straight answers on what IBM is willing to support will be happy with the present answers. And those of us that know better will be able to cope with the rather less mundane state of reality...

  • With Domino and Firewall-1 (and a lot of other server-based software, in the future) VARs and system integrators can now offer Linux-based solutions instead of pricier SCO, Solaris, or NT boxes.

    Anything on those Domino vulnerabilities that were making the rounds of Bugtraq a while back? A client of mine was bitten by one of these a few months ago...

  • Yes Yes, but... (Score:3)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Sunday November 07, 1999 @07:05AM (#1554285)
    System Requirements, Availability and Pricing
    Lotus Domino R5 for Linux is supported on two leading commercial distributions of Linux: Red Hat Linux 6.0 and Caldera OpenLinux.

    Ack! WHY?! That's not a very good idea on IBM's part. That's like saying "This product is only supported under Windows 95. You MAY be able to run it under Windows 98, but we won't support you if you do." They really should have made it generalized enough that it can run on all major distributions. There are going to be sysadmins out there who want Domino Server, but run Slackware or Debian.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • So what if it isn't free? Big Name Software ported over to Linux will only serve to increase acceptance in Big Name Corporations. Usage in Big Name Corporations will in turn increase both funding and coding resources applied to Linux, accelerating development.

    See, more expensive stuff for the Fortune 500 doesn't mean a decrease in free stuff for the rest of the world. If you're looking for more free stuff, you're not gonna buy Domino anyway.

    Conversely, PHBs who buy Domino do so because they (need someone to sue || don't trust free software || like the fact that they're blowing big bucks on their IT infrastructure || IBM salesperson told them to).

    This will help take the heat off some of us sysads who have been taking fire for bringing a "hobbyist" OS into the workplace.
  • Domino is the server side to notes. Notes is a middleware product to enable collaboration. When properly used it can be excellent at this; when poorly used it just frustrates and annoys people. Some of the features include: email, calendar, addressbook, databases and custom applications. Of course EVERYTHING is implemented as a database, and is designed from the ground up as a collabroative network application (yes, even email and addressbook - actually a GOOD thing for some, say I move my office, I tell my sales rep who updates one entry and shipping has got current information immediately, as does tech support, etc. The strong point are the database and applications arenas, anyone can develop a notes database and put it to use within their team, department, area, division, group, company, enterprise, etc. Applications are a tad harder, but not by much. Much like the web, this does have the unfortunate side effect that any IDIOT can put up a database/application even without haveing a clue what they're doing and as a result you can get some very bad designs out there... which for some reason people blame Notes/Domino for. Like I should blame Netscape for all those hideous home pages that start with a picture of someone's cat??

    oh yeah... "I AM"
  • I don't know but I think the Linux crowd of Notes users is quite large (and growing) compared to the AIX crowd. A good number of large companies use Notes, and their IT shops have some Linux people. Just looking around Slashdot when a Notes article comes up, there are a significant number of people that just want the client to do their work in Linux.

    Linux is making it's way onto users' work desktops, so porting to there makes sense. With the server coming out, I can understand that admins would want to do their work on they Linux workstation as well. The problem comes that Lotus has to justify the resources it will take fully support the product. The porting/compiling of it is just a minor piece in the big picture. :)
  • don't hold your breath. they killed off all non windows clients with r5... including AIX. If the internal IBMers that screamed bloody murder over the loss of the AIX client couldn't bring it back there isn't much we can do.
  • Right on! No commercial company should release any product, be it Oracle, Netscape, Sybase, Borland, IBM, etc, unless it is certified to run on at least the top ten distributions. Then, it should also be runnable on the second ten, just not necessarily certified. So what if it takes an extra year or two of development, an extra dozen or three tech support personnel. At least some whiners would be happy.

    Of course, that still leaves out the #21 and up distributions in the dark and free to whine. Lord knows downloading the glibc/c++/whatever libraries RedHat (or other supported dists) uses and setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH is just too damn much to ask. For all the Debian/Slackware folks that claim to be oh so hard-core and the only "true" distributions, you'd think they would be able to figure this much out.
  • For what it's worth, I ran Notes in VMWare just fine, when I was sentenced to a job that used it. :) If you really don't want to reboot or install another computer with Windows. But now I am free of that job, yippee!

  • Re:none (Score:1)

    by whoop ( 194 )
    I'm not the original poster, but you see this anytime someone appears here on Slashdot referencing commercial software. Short of every piece of software in the world being GPLed, they will always whine. Just move on. :)
  • In order to support web browsers as Notes clients, a lot of rendering must be done on the server - at the expense of all other users. For many installations which are running at peak capacity, this is a luxury that can't be afforded.

    Good news, however, on the Wine front. For more details, see The Lotus Notes for Linux Resource Page [brooklinesw.com]

  • Lotus Notes for Linux (under WINE) page:
    http://www.brooklinesw.com/linux/l inuxnotes.html [brooklinesw.com]
  • Perhaps. But testing takes time & money. It will probably run fine on the other distributions, but IBM didn't want to spend the resorces to test it on any others.
    Hey! I volunteer to test the domina under Slackware! Just drop me a note... :-)

    Re all these distributions with different libc/glibc's - er, ain't the domina coming as source to compile-it-yourselves? BTW: how's the current state of the GNUotes project?

  • Is it pure coincidence that the dumber the post, the more anonymous the appender?

    If you anonymous flamebaiters don't have the guts to publicly stand with your opinions then you better keep off here.
    Go waste someone else's bandwidth.

    BTW: Linux needs companies who believe so much in Linux that they consider it worthwile to develop commercial software. And we need customers who are willing to pay for it. Often enough I hear them say: "when it doesn't cost anything, it's not worth anything."

  • they killed off all non windows clients with r5

    Wrong. The MacOS client is alive. It even supports the Admin and Designer portions.
  • ..a free lunch!

    I don't think or expect every single application releeased on Linux to be GPL, especially major applications like this one.

    There will probably remain a charge for two major areas on a Linux system
    a) commercial apps like this one until a free equivalent
    b) games

  • Lotus notes is nice stuff, I like it a lot.

    So I hope I can use it when they sell it. I just need to get some money first. Unless I steal a copy when the office supply truck pulls up. Like, he'll open the back of the truck and then he'll turn his back on it. He'll be thinking things like "I wonder if that girl was 18" or "I sure like muffins". And when he's doing that, it'll be like "Yoink! sorry, sucker! You had your chance!"

    That would be so sweet. And I know I can do it because I'm pretty crafty.

    Then I'll be Lotus-Notesing all over the place. This is what I do.


  • I gotta say that while this is good news for Linux in general, I personally would prefer a client before the server. I know for a fact that my job will NOT be moving the R5 server off the NT platform but dammit, why the fsck can't Lotus do us IT guys a REAL favor and make a client! I hate having to use the R5 client thru winframe. It blowz! C'mon...if they can make a Mac one, why not one for Linux? Lotus is approaching this all wrong. Just my 2 cents...
  • How is that Linux Standard Base coming along? I haven't heard anything in a while. If a software company can't release a product for "Linux" then fragmentation has already begun.

  • Re:Yes Yes, but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    IBM/lotus does say from time to time "This product is only supported under Windows 95. You MAY be able to run it under Windows 98, but we won't support you if you do." Read the release notes on each version of notes (there is a new version every quarter). The 'supported' operating systems don't change overnight. I remember running 4.x.x on NT 4 long before it was 'certified' only for NT 4 (Notes only claimed it supported NT 3.5.1 for a while).
  • Anything on those Domino vulnerabilities that were making the rounds of Bugtraq a while back? A client of mine was bitten by one of these a few months ago...

    Most of these things should be called "do not ever use domino out of the box", since the "flaws" exposed in BugTraq only consist of pretty good examples why you should have a skilled administrator handling your servers.

    Lotus Notes/Domino is one of the more secure systems I have seen, provided that:

    Your administrators do a good job on securing the machine and the ACLs...

    Your developers know a little bit of the security bits too...

    The underlying OS is properly secured (which hopefully should become a littlebit better with Linux support ;-)...

    The only nasty tidbits on Notes 4.5/4.6 is the notoriously weak SMTP-implementation, in which you can easily DOS a server or use it as a relay, and some hiccups in the connection manager, also providing the possibility of DOS'ing the server. The first can be avoided by using a decent SMTP gateway between the notes server and the outside world (linux+sendmail for example), the latter was fixed in one of the QMRs.

    There was also a glitch in which the client didn't encrypt sent messages as it should, but that's also fixed, and I have yet to discover any bug which made it possible to compromise security... There's no such thing as a "Notes Melissa", and all the code that is executed on either client or server has to be signed by the developers, so macro virii won't stand a chance in a good administered environment.

    Notes is far from perfect, but in the hands of the right people, it does a great job security-wise...

    Anyway, that's my 2 eurocent.


    I've got a message for all the beautiful people of the world...
    THERE ARE A LOT MORE OF US UGLY MOTHERF*CKERS AROUND THAN YOU ARE!

  • Haven't you tried the Windows client under Wine yet? I'm sure we can hack it into submission during lunch. Then all you'd have left to complain about is porting LSX and I'm sure we can harass Willie on that one.

    (we both need a life, Kris 8^)

  • ppc (Score:3)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday November 07, 1999 @03:11PM (#1554311) Homepage
    i'm just surprised that despite the closed-sourcedness of Notes, there are no LinuxPPC binaries. While I wouldn't ordinarily expect anyone to support the PPC platform, since IBM _makes_ a number of machines that use the PPC chip you'd think they'd want to at least pay the platform lip service.. i guess they assume any ppc machines they sold will be running AIX anyway. :P

    That being said, i do think that one of linux's greatest strengths is its flexibility across hardware platforms, and they really should make an effort to compile binaries for the ppc and alpha platforms.. i guess those markets just aren't big enough. But still i'm sure it's a lot less effort to support redhat linuxppc vs. redhat x86 than it is to support, say, distributions running different versions of glibc.
  • > saying that Domino Server Release 5 will be
    > out for Linux within 30 days.

    Which, given Lotus's record of releases of Notes and Domino R5 for other platforms, means in three months.

    This is not a troll, I'm serious.
  • One last comment, since there was a rumour at the conference to that effect -- Someone told me that the Win32 Notes client ran on top of WINE, the Windows Emulator for Linux. Has anyone confirmed this?

    I'm running the Win32 Notes R5 client under Wine as I write this. It's not altogether stable, but is good enough for reading and replying to email without rebooting to Win98.

  • opps... forgot the mac... ok, make that "killed off all *nix clients with r5"
  • re the size of the Linux crowd vs the AIX crowd...

    Well let's see... AIX is the desktop of most of IBM's engineers, designers, systems programmers, infrastructure developers, etc... it also provides the kiosk style office machines in their manufacturing plants via the netstation products. Notes is IBM's strategic collaboration platform. There are I suspect far more people in that first catagory around the world than there are seriously looking at Linux as a BUSINESS DESKTOP (not I'm not talking about home users because Notes is a business product). This provides a very large set of users that want notes on AIX; yet it died. On my site for example these people now are officially told to run Notes under a "windows client" called "wincenter" against a bank of Windows Terminal Server boxes. There are still hold outs like myself who run the native AIX client at a backlevel because it was the last version put into production level use.

    Someone had it close awhile ago; they were killed due to lack of interest... not user interest, but mgmt interest.
  • Now, now...

    You have to realize that *WE* the techies would like nothing more than have the Notes client running on either KDE or GNOME (irreverant of the port -- Domino Sneak Peek 1 has been running on Red Hat, Caldera, PHT TurboLinux, Suse, Mandrake, Slackware and Debian).

    However, you have to realize that the client is there for all people that use computers, which includes people that do other stuff for a living and where computers are a tool, not the primary focus of their jobs.

    Therefore, is it realistic to think that a secretary would leave familiar territory (which is what Windows, to a certain degree affords) for Linux? I was at the Alternative: Linux Conference last week in Montreal last week and there was a lot of debate around that.

    In the end, three things were agreed upon: One, the functionality provided by the Web Browser (and added applets) provided a lot of features you would want the Notes client in the first place; 2) Provide feedback to Lotus in regards to getting the Notes client ported to Linux -- realizing that Lotus has to pay its engineers and any resources placed to that effort are taken away from other places; and, 3) It is a good effort and Lotus should be commended for the work so far.

    One last comment, since there was a rumour at the conference to that effect -- Someone told me that the Win32 Notes client ran on top of WINE, the Windows Emulator for Linux. Has anyone confirmed this?

  • Ever tried installing Netscape Communicator from a tarball recently? Ever release I have tried from 4.5 onwards has been dynamically linked against a different C++ runtime. There is a workaround to create symlinks pointing to the current library, but these do not always work, giving undefined symbols.

    The C++ library depends upon the revision of the compiler used to create the executable, and must also be itself linked against the correct libc. My box used to have 6 different C++ runtimes in place to allow me to run different packages, and getting hold of some of them was a nightmare. (Try finding the one generated by egcs when compiled on a libc5 system!).

    This is the major problem with binary files under Linux, and the reason why I compile the binary if I can. It is making binary distribution a nightmare.
  • LSB won't solve the fragmentation of support that's already occurring. Fortunately, Redhat is so dominant right now which makes it easy -just use Redhat if you want to be sure you'll get support.
  • This software is really good stuff.

    Sneak Peek 1 was made to run on Suse, RedHat, Caldera and PHT TurboLinux, but reading the forum (http://www.notes.net) it runs also on other distros: Slackware, Mandrake and Debian to only name a few.

    Sneak Peek 2, I hear, was released and given to people at Lotusphere Berlin. It ran on RedHat 6.1 and the news coming from there is that RedHat 6.1 will be supported.

    With this new entry in the family of software running on Linux, there is even more momentum being gained by the little OS that could. I for one wish for a Notes client for GNOME or KDE, but as my post elsewhere in the thread indicates, this might be a bit premature.

    Go Lotus! :o) With this new entry, Linux is gaining real

  • Now now, was that sarcasm I detected?
    I can identify with this AC - my Domino server doesn't crash regularly, but it does periodically bog down severely. And I hate it when the Server Admin GUI crashes and then refuses to re-start until you've cycled the server. I can't wait to switch my Windows box over to Linux!
  • This software is really good stuff.

    Sneak Peek 1 was made to run on Suse, RedHat, Caldera and PHT TurboLinux, but reading the forum (http://www.notes.net) it runs also on other distros: Slackware, Mandrake and Debian to only name a few.

    Sneak Peek 2, I hear, was released and given to people at Lotusphere Berlin. It ran on RedHat 6.1 and the news coming from there is that RedHat 6.1 will be supported.

    With this new entry in the family of software running on Linux, there is even more momentum being gained by the little OS that could. I for one wish for a Notes client for GNOME or KDE, but as my post elsewhere in the thread indicates, this might be a bit premature.

    Go Lotus! :o)

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